Middle East sour crude was trading largely steady Tuesday morning in Asia, even as OPEC and its allies were ambiguous on the extension of output cuts at a Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee meeting Monday.
Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih, who had repeatedly said he would prefer the cuts to be rolled over, conceded Monday that the 24-country OPEC/non-OPEC coalition would not take a decision until its June 25-26 meeting in Vienna.
"Given the many uncertainties in the next few months, some on fundamentals, some on geopolitics, some on macroeconomics, it was found that April will be premature on taking a decision on what production would be in the second half," Falih said after chairing the meeting.
Sour crude prices for grades such as Dubai and Oman have flipped from discounts to premiums over light sweet Brent-like crude grades in recent months, as supplies of premium crudes increase relative to lower quality, fuel oil-heavy ones.
OPEC's own analysis arm said last week in its monthly oil market report that oil inventories as of January were 2.88 billion barrels, about 19.1 million barrels above the five-year average that the coalition is targeting.
Meanwhile, crude oil traders in Asia were largely occupied with spot market trading for sour crude volumes scheduled to load in May. The vast majority of deals for the May trading cycle is expected to be concluded within this week, they told S&P Global Platts.
"Nothing much happening today [Tuesday], market is mostly busy with tenders," a China-based sour crude trader said.
Several fresh spot market deals emerged Tuesday on the sidelines of buy and sell tenders.
At least one 500,000-barrel cargo of Abu Dhabi's light sour Murban crude was reported sold to a Japanese end-user at a discount of 15-20 cents/b under the grade's OSP, market sources said Tuesday. Murban had earlier traded on the spot market at a discount of 15 cents/b to its OSP.
Murban's sister crude, Das Blend, was reported to have traded at similar discounts this week, traders added.
Meanwhile, no movement was seen on Qatar's light sour Land crude grade yet, traders said, adding that it was quite likely that the cargoes were exchanged as part of a private deal without being offered on the spot market openly this month.
Elsewhere in Asia, Malaysia's Petronas released its April crude OSP differential, setting it at a premium of $5.50/b to Platts Dated Brent crude assessments.
This is up 10 cents/b from the March differential, the state-owned company said in an email notification Tuesday.
