CRUDE MOC: Abu Dhabi's Upper Zakum cargo for October load trades

New York — A cargo of Abu Dhabi's Upper Zakum crude traded in the Platts Market on Close assessment process on Aug. 25, the first full cargo to trade in the MOC for Asia crude in August so far.

China's Unipec was seen lifting an offer from Singapore-based ExxonMobil Trading Asia Pacific for a 500,000 barrel cargo of the crude, for loading over Oct. 1-25, at a discount of 75 cents/b to the Platts front-month cash Dubai assessments in October.

EXTAP commenced the offer for the cargo at a discount of 50 cents/b to Platts front-month cash Dubai assessments in October, gradually easing the offer until the trade at a 75 cents/b discount at 4:27 pm Singapore time (0827 GMT).

The Platts MOC assessment process for Middle East sour crude partials also saw a flurry of trades on Aug. 25. A total of 12 partials of 25,000 barrels each traded on Aug. 25, consisting of 11 October Dubai partials and a single October Oman partial.

Trading house Koch was the sole buyer of the 12 partials on Aug. 25, while oil majors BP, Reliance and Unipec were on the selling side.

The trades on Aug. 25 bring the number of partials traded in August so far to 64, consisting of 56 Dubai and eight Oman partials. No convergences have been declared as yet.

Meanwhile, the spread between benchmark October cash Dubai against same-month Dubai futures rebounded on Aug. 25 to a discount of 74 cents/b on Aug. 25, up 9 cents/b from the previous day.

The spread between Platts cash Oman and October Dubai futures was unchanged day-on-day at minus 54 cents/b at the Asian close on Aug. 25.