CRUDE MOC: Platts March cash Dubai crude closes at $58.46/b, averages $64.286/b in Jan

Singapore — The S&P Global Platts cash assessment for March-loading Dubai crude oil cargoes settled at $58.46/b Friday and averaged $64.286/b over January.

The March cash assessment for Oman crude settled at $58.46/b Friday, taking the average for January to $64.696/b.

By comparison, front-month cash Dubai averaged $64.889/b over December, while cash Oman averaged $65.360/b.

Dubai's discount to the Oman assessment averaged 41 cents/b in January, narrowing from 47.1 cents/b in December, Platts data showed.

In the Platts Market on Close assessment process for Middle East crude in Asia, 22 partials were traded Friday, consisting of 21 March Dubai partials and a single partial of March Oman crude.

A total of 139 partials, equivalent to 3.48 million barrels, traded in the MOC process over January. This consisted of 132 Dubai and seven March Oman partials.

A total of two convergences occurred in the MOC process in January, both on Dubai partials and both for March loading cargoes of Upper Zakum crude declared for delivery. One cargo was declared by Unipec and one by Reliance, with PetroChina the recipient in both instances.

Meanwhile, seven full sized cargoes were traded from offers shown in the MOC process in January. Two of these were Murban, two were Das Blend, two were Upper Zakum and one was a cargo of Qatar Marine crude. All four Murban and Das Blend cargoes were offered by Total and picked up by various buyers.

Full sized cargoes are typically 500,000 barrels per bid, offer and trade, whereas partials are sized in clips of 25,000 barrels each. Under the partials trading mechanism, the seller declares a full 500,000-barrel cargo to the buyer after 20 partials have been traded for the same loading month between the two companies.

Both Upper Zakum cargoes were offered by ExxonMobil and picked up by Shell and Total. The Qatar Marine cargo was offered into the MOC by Unipec, and was purchased by Shell at a discount of 25 cents/b to the OSP.

Other cargo offers that were shown in the MOC included Qatar Land and Banoco Arab Medium crude this month.

January saw the second highest number of cargoes traded on the MOC after June 2019, when a total of nine full sized cargoes changed hands via the process. Of those, six were Murban, two were Upper Zakum and one was a cargo of Das Blend.

The March spread between Dubai cash and futures -- also known as the M1/M3 structure -- averaged $2.11/b over January, falling 56 cents/b from the $2.67/b averaged over December.