Tasweeq sold five or six DFC cargoes at premiums of between $2.90 and $3.20 to Dubai quotes to buyers including Japan’s JX Holdings, a South Korean refiner and majors that may include ExxonMobil, Shell and BP, trading sources with knowledge of the deals said on Thursday.
June-loading DFC cargoes were sold last month at premiums of about $2.70-$2.80.
Asian refiners are favoring Qatari condensate over Asia-Pacific grades like Australia’s Northwest Shelf (NWS), which, because of their pricing against European benchmark dated Brent, have become relatively more expensive.
Attractive prices have also prompted European refiners to increase imports from Qatar.
“It’s still relatively cheaper than some of the other condensates,” a trader said.
“The Brent-Dubai EFS is narrowing a little bit, but it’s still wide enough. In the past, most of the barrels would stay in the East, but in recent months we see refiners bringing cargoes to the west.”
The premium of Brent over Dubai crude, also known as Exchange for Swaps (EFS), has stayed near or above $6 a barrel since Japan’s March 11 disaster, which shut down petrochemical crackers in Japan and reduced demand for naphtha-rich condensate.
As Japanese petrochemical plants resumed production in April and naphtha demand recovered, crack spreads for the feedstock bounced back to almost $170 a ton, their widest since January.
In this month’s tender, Tasweeq also sold about two or three cargoes of low sulphur condensate (LSC) at premiums of between $1.40 and $1.60 a barrel to Dubai quotes, the sources said, compared with premiums of slightly less than $1.50 last month
