Saudi Aramco mostly fulfils Asia May crude allocations

Saudi Arabia's state-controlled Saudi Aramco has provided most Asia-Pacific refiners with their requested volumes of term crude for May loading, as Riyadh prepares to gradually unwind its voluntary 1mn b/d output cut.

Two northeast Asian refiners nominated their normal contractual crude volumes from Aramco for May loading, and will receive all of their requested allocations. Two Chinese refiners were heard to have asked for about 50,000-100,000 b/d less than their term contractual volumes for loading in May, and will get their requested volumes, traders said. Destocking and a heavy refinery maintenance programme may have reduced Chinese refiners' appetite for sour crude.

Japanese refiners requested regular contractual volumes of crude for May loading, and received cuts of around 5-10pc from their nominated levels. This was smaller than the reductions of around 10-15pc that Japanese buyers received for April loading.

State-controlled Indian refiners earlier asked to buy around 9.5mn bl (305,000 b/d) of term crude from Saudi Arabia for May loading, lower than typical levels, in line with a government directive to reduce the country's dependence on Mideast Gulf crude.

Saudi Arabia has said it will unwind its voluntary 1mn b/d cut by 250,000 b/d in May, 350,000 b/d in June and 400,000 b/d in July, as part of this month's Opec+ agreement to incrementally increase output quotas in May-July.

Aramco issued its official May crude formula prices last week, raising prices for its customers in Asia-Pacific by 20-50¢/bl against the previous month. The increases were on the higher side of market expectations.

By Fabian Ng