In Freight News 02/04/2015
Chinaoil, the trading arm of PetroChina , has bought a large volume of Abu Dhabi crude in the first two days of trading for June-loading barrels, a sign that it could embark on a buying spree this month, traders said on Thursday.
The purchases were reminiscent of Chinaoil’s buying spree in October last year, which strengthened the benchmark Dubai price and tightened Middle East crude supply in Asia.
The state-owned company took delivery of a third Upper Zakum crude cargo on Thursday from Unipec, the trading arm of Asia’s largest refiner Sinopec, in deals revealed during pricing agency Platts’ market assessment process, traders said.
A day ago, Chinaoil bought one cargo each of the Abu Dhabi grade from Royal Dutch Shell and Unipec, they added.
Chinaoil does not usually comment on trade matters.
In October, Chinaoil bought a record 16.5 million barrels of sour crude to load two months later. That boosted China’s imports to an all-time high of more than 7 million barrels per day in December as the world’s largest energy consumer filled up its storage tanks with cheap oil.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Florence Tan; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
