SINGAPORE, July 5 (Reuters) - A sharp drop in official selling prices (OSPs) for Abu Dhabi crude grades set the tone for a weaker trading month for September cargoes in the Middle East market, as traders awaited the release of Saudi prices. Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) cut the OSP for flagship grade Murban by 84 cents relative to benchmark Dubai crude for June. Traders said the bigger-than-expected drop would probably trigger a rebound in the grade's differential, but it would still be contingent upon the price that Saudi Aramco sets for the kingdom's grades of similar quality. ESPO values posted a modest rebound on expectations that the arbitrage to the U.S. west coast would reopen, but it was not yet clear whether that would clear a backlog of cargoes in northeast Asia. * TENDERS - BP's joint venture in Russia, TNK-BP , sold three 100,000-tonne cargoes of ESPO Blend crude via tender for loading in August at slightly higher premiums than recent deals. - Some traders attributed the rise to a recovery of Brent's premium to Dubai, making crude priced on the Middle Eastern quote more attractive. - BP bought the cargo for Aug. 6-9 loading at $3.45 a barrel above Dubai quotes and a parcel for Aug. 15-18 lifting at $3.75 a barrel premium, traders said. Unipec bought a cargo for Aug. 26-29 loading at $3.90 a barrel above Dubai quotes, they said. * DME OMAN - September Oman traded on the DME fell 8 cents to a discount of 15 cents to Dubai swap quotes at 0830 GMT, using the settlement price for DME futures, the ICE one-minute marker for Singapore and the Brent-Dubai EFS as calculated by Reuters. - The Dubai curve structure remained firmly in contango, including a premium of about 26 cents for September over August and 21 cents for October over September. * EAST/WEST - The Brent/Dubai Exchange of Futures for Swaps (EFS) for August jumped 43 cents to $5.88 a barrel at 0830 GMT, Reuters data showed. The front-month EFS on June 15 touched $9.20, the highest intraday value since the spread reached a record of almost $12 in October 2004. * ASIAN REFINING - Middle East oil producers need to offer bigger discounts to entice refiners to buy more in Asia, the world's fastest-growing fuel market and home to most of the industry's surplus processing capacity, BP's chief economist said on Tuesday. - "There is so much capacity that you will see refiners taking throughputs wherever they can, if the crude comes at a price where they can make a profit," BP's Christof Ruhl told Reuters in Singapore. * MARKET NEWS - The International Energy Agency said on Monday it hoped a very sizeable portion of its oil stock release will be taken up by the market and the move was already adding to supplies of light, sweet crude. - Owners of the largest oil tankers will see their earnings almost double in the second half of the year, from the first six months, on strong Chinese demand and rising Middle East exports, a Reuters poll showed. - Azerbaijan's January-June oil exports via Russia rose 3.6 percent to 1.084 million tonnes from a year earlier, Azeri state energy company SOCAR said. - Britain may create a central stockholding agency for oil reserves following a warning that could face emergency stock shortages within the next 10 years, a spokesman at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC)said. * REFINERY MARGINS - Complex processing margins for Dubai in Singapore were around $9.01 per barrel, up from an average of the last five days of $6.06, Reuters data show. Over the last year, the average margin has been around $6.39 per barrel. * CRACK SPREADS - Fuel oil's August crack narrowed 15 cents to a discount of $6.83 a barrel to Dubai crude. - Gas oil's August crack rose 12 cents to a premium of $18.51 a barrel to Dubai crude. - The naphtha CFR Japan front-month crack narrowed 47 cents to a discount of $7.10 a barrel to Brent. * OUTRIGHT PRICES - August ICE Brent LCOc1 was at $111.04 a barrel at 0830 GMT, down 57 cents from Monday. (Reporting by Alejandro Barbajosa and Florence Tan; Editing by Manash Goswami)

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