LONDON, May 17 (Reuters) - Outages in the North Sea, issues
with Russian pipelines and reduced exports from some
Mediterranean exporting countries have combined to make West
African grades more attractive to European customers, traders
said on Friday.
Climbing gasoline refining margins were also giving a boost
to the lighter crude grades.
NIGERIA
* North Sea Forties crude differentials rose on Thursday to
the highest level since early 2016, as an outage to the
relatively small Flotta stream has added to supply curbs
affecting Ekofisk and Statfjord. * These reduced exports, along with supply issues related to
Russian pipeline contamination issues and a slight drop in
Mediterranean output, has raised European appetite for West
African crude.
* Three Suezmaxes were recently scheduled to bring West
African crude, likely Nigerian, to the UK for late May and early
June loading.
* Saudi Arabia will provide India's IOC with an extra 2
million barrels of crude a month from July to December to
compensate for tightened U.S. sanctions, as traders have noted
no sharp uptick in buying of Nigerian to compensate the loss.
* Nigeria's NNPC significantly raised the June official
selling price (OSP) for Bonny Light, up to 156 cents from 139
cents per barrel last month, and Qua Iboe to 171 cents from 143
cents per barrel.
* The prices still fall far short of offerings which have
neared all-time highs, with one seller offering Qua Iboe at a
premium of $2.70 to date Brent.
ANGOLA
* Term allocations for Angola's July loading programme are
set to emerge early next week.
* Asian demand may be weighed down by a widening of the
Brent-Dubai spread DUB-EFS-1M as well as steep backwardation.
* Brent futures are experiencing their biggest backwardation
since June 2014, as market participants expect draws on crude
stocks amid tight global supply. * Those factors were seen to be significantly deflating
Chinese demand for Angolan crude, though traders expected that
market to largely meet expected high price offerings.
RELATED NEWS
* China offered strong support to Iran on Friday, with its
top diplomat telling Iran's foreign minister that China opposes
unilateral sanctions and supports Tehran's efforts to safeguard
its interests. * China has issued a second batch of refined fuel export
quotas for 2019 that is 30 percent higher than the first batch,
two trading sources briefed on the matter said on
Friday.