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China: PetroChina reaches purchase agreement with Rosneft on ESPO crude

https://www.chemnet.com   Aug 02,2010
PetroChina has entered into a contract with Russia's Rosneft on purchasing ESPO (Eastern Siberian Pacific Ocean) Blend crude, a source Rosneft said but declined to reveal contract period and pricing formula.


The supply of ESPO blend crude was stable in the spot market at present, averaging 10-15 Aframax-sized cargoes a month. The latest deal done price of the grade for October loading was at Dubai mean price, versus US$1-1.5/bbl of discounts in the second quarter.


However, China has just purchased one spot cargo of ESPO so far, with Sinopec's foreign-trade arm Unipec as the importer, indicated C1's record.
Chinese state-owned oil giants were prudent in purchasing ESPO crude this year, because contract price might be influenced by changes in spot prices, some market sources reckoned.


On one hand, no purchases from Chinese oil refiners lent few support to prices of ESPO crude in Asia; however, on the other hand, they lost the chance to take in low-cost spot cargoes, denoted an international trader.


As a matter of fact, the medium sweet ESPO blend crude was well received by Chinese refineries in coastal areas, a survey found. Some traders expected these refineries may call for more imports of ESPO crude with the Sino-Russia Crude Pipeline on-stream.


Since ESPO crude became available end 2009, the resource was gradually received, buyers of which included traders BP, Vitol and Gunvor, as well as refineries in Japan, South Korea and US west coast, C1's record showed.
Separately, Brazil and some crude producing countries in the Middle East had intentions to set up crude transfer centers in the Far East to compete with Russia.


The Eastern Siberian Pacific Ocean Crude Pipeline is expected to be connected with the Sino-Russia Crude Pipeline in end October. The former is 4,000km in length, with the Chinese section (Daqing-Mohe) extending 960km. About 1-mil cu m of crude is needed to fill the pipeline at the early stage. Transmission capacity of the ESPO pipeline is likely to reach 30-mil mt per year and would be expanded to 50-mil mt per year in the future.
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