Sudan sells Dec Nile Blend at higher price

Oct 19, 2005 (TOKYO) — Sudanese state oil firm Sudapet has sold 2.6 million barrels of medium-sweet Nile Blend crude for December loading via monthly spot tender at a higher price than the previous sale, traders said on Wednesday.

The latest tender closed on Oct. 18.

Traders said a Japanese trader and a European trader each picked up 1 million barrels, and another European trader bought 600,000 barrels.

The prices fetched for the December-loading cargoes were at a discount of about $2 a barrel to the Indonesia Crude Price (ICP) for Minas.

In its previous tender, Sudapet sold November-loading Nile Blend crude at discounts of between $2.70 and $3.00 a barrel to the Minas ICP.

Traders attributed the narrower discount to healthy demand from Japan. Japanese utilities can directly burn heavy sweet crude such as Minas and Nile Blend at their thermal power plants.

Japan’s biggest utility, Tokyo Electric Power Co. , said this month that it planned to buy 43 percent more oil for thermal power generation in the year to March than originally planned, to offset low utilisation rates at its nuclear plants.

(Reuters/ST)