Murban crude fell to the lowest level in 3 weeks, and Qatar reduced the price of Al-Shaheen crude in July

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Murban crude, the Middle East’s light, sour benchmark, fell to a three-week low on Thursday amid fears of weak demand.

An official at Japan’s Cosmo Oil said the unit of Cosmo Energy Holdings shut down a crude distillation unit with a capacity of 102,000 barrels per day at its Chiba refinery on May 17.

Japan is a major buyer of Murban crude. Crude demand and prices were under downward pressure due to the outage of the crude processing unit, in addition to maintenance work in several Japanese refineries.

Meanwhile, Qatar Energy awarded bids to sell cargoes for loading in July. The selling price of Al-Shaheen crude in fixed-term contracts for July delivery was set at $1.03 a barrel over Dubai crude, its lowest since April 2021, as a result of weak refining profit margins in Asia.

The price of the fixed-term contracts is determined after the sale of five cargoes of Al-Shaheen crude for July delivery via an immediate offering, at a premium of between 80 cents and $1.07 a barrel over Dubai prices. The cargoes were sold to Total (EPA:TTEF), Shell, ExxonMobil and Vitol.

Prices were set in spot bids for the June cargoes at a premium of between $2 and $2.4 a barrel to Dubai prices.

In bids, Qatar Energy also sold Qatari offshore crude for July delivery at a premium of 10 cents to 20 cents above Dubai prices, and onshore Qatari crude at a premium of 10 cents to Dubai prices.

Sri Lanka’s Ceylon Petroleum Corp. is believed to have bought 700,000 barrels of Murban crude for delivery between August 20-24. Traders said the sale was likely to be at a premium of about $5.4 a barrel over the official selling price for August.

(Prepared by Mahmoud Abdel-Gawad for the Arabic Bulletin – Edited by Ali Khafaji)