RTRS:Asia-Pacific crude-Up as Australia supply face delay
SINGAPORE, March 15 (Reuters) - Asia-Pacific crude
gained support on Thursday as Australian cargoes could be
delayed again as offshore oilfields were shut on the approach of
another tropical cyclone.
Woodside Petroleum and Apache Corp said on Wednesday they
had shut several of their oilfields off Australia's northwest
coast ahead of the storm as Tropical Cyclone Lua approached.
[ID: nL4E8EE12J]
Australia's Woodside halted production at six oilfields,
including its Vincent and Enfield oilfields and Cossack, Wanaea,
Lambert and Hermes oilfields on the North West Shelf, the
company said.
Apache Corp shut oil production at its Stag field and was
evacuating non-essential personnel from its Varanus Island
natural gas processing facility.
The previous storm in January had delayed the loadings of
heavy sweet crude such as Enfield, Vincent, Pyrenees and Van
Gogh by one to three weeks.
Only two Vincent cargoes are available in May, one less than
previous expectations.
* ARBITRAGE
- Thailand's national oil company PTT Plc has bought its
first cargo of Colombia Castilla crude in a bid to reduce its
reliance on Middle Eastern imports as escalating tensions
between the West and Iran threaten supply, shipping and trade
sources said. [ID: nL4E8EF43B]
PTT bought 2 million barrels of Colombia's Castilla crude,
to be loaded onto a very large crude carrier in late March, one
of the sources said. Part of the heavy sweet crude will be
blended and used locally while the remainder is available for
sale, sources said.
A shipping fixture showed PTT had provisionally booked VLCC
Sarah or Saturn Glory for about $5 million to load crude in
Venezuela on March 27-31 and head for Singapore or Thailand.
The arbitrage could also help ease tight supply of heavy
sweet crude in Asia as output in Australia has been affected by
tropical storms, while South Sudan shut down production in
January in a dispute with Sudan.
CRUDE Price Prev Change % change
MAY Oman diff to Dubai 3.23 2.61 0.62
MAY Brent 124.70 125.20 -0.50 -0.40%
MAY Dubai 120.82 121.21 -0.39 -0.32%
May DME Oman 124.05 123.82 0.23 0.19%
MAY Brent/Dubai EFS 3.88 3.99 -0.11
DUB-EFS-1M
