Middle East crude benchmarks Oman, Dubai and Murban were little changed on Friday.

Spot premiums for the benchmark grades were largely steady this week, hovering around $2 a barrel to Dubai quotes, as trading activities were muted during the APPEC week.

QatarEnergy is expected to issue its monthly sell tenders soon with traders kicking off trade for November-loading cargoes next week.

SINGAPORE CASH DEALS

Cash Dubai’s premium to swaps rose 1 cent to $1.98 a barrel.

NEWS

Six oil refineries in Louisiana in the path of Hurricane Francine began recovering on Thursday from the storm’s passage overnight, companies and sources familiar with operations at the plants said.

Russia’s offline primary oil refining capacity in September is set to jump 34% from August, according to Reuters calculations based on data from industry sources, owing to technical outages, Ukrainian drone attacks and seasonal maintenance.

India wants oil producers group OPEC and its allies to raise oil output as there are countries such as India where fuel demand is rising, the nation’s oil secretary Pankaj Jain said on Thursday.

The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which exports Kazakhstan’s oil via the Black Sea, increased oil exports by 2.6% in January-August from the same period in 2023 to 43.8 million metric tons, the consortium said on Friday.

Experts will this week resume a risky operation to salvage the Sounion tanker that was repeatedly attacked by Yemen’s Houthis in the Red Sea last month and still holds about one million barrels of crude oil, maritime sources said on Thursday.

Germany wants to diversify oil supply to Berlin’s main oil refinery Schwedt to avoid becoming overly dependent on Kazakh oil but would welcome a potential increase in Kazakh oil imports, a German government official said on Thursday.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Florence Tan’ Editing by Maju Samuel)