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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Indian Oil Corp (IOC) ,
the country's top refiner, has loaded its first cargo of Iraq's newly introduced
Basra Medium crude grade, according to Reuters with reference to ship tracking data
from Refinitiv Eikon and a source with knowledge of the matter.
IOC
loaded the cargo onto Minerva Kalypso, a suezmax-sized vessel, which left Iraq's
southern port of Basra on Jan. 4, the data showed.
The ship is expected
to arrive at Chennai port in southeastern India for IOC's subsidiary Chennai
Petroleum Corp (CPCL) around Jan. 14.
Iraq's state oil marketing company
(SOMO) launched the new sour crude grade in January by splitting existing Basra
Light production into two grades to provide better quality
stability.
"From this year IOC will get all three grades - Basra Light,
Basra Medium and Basra Heavy - depending on the availability with the supplier,"
the source said, adding that the 1 million barrels of Basra Medium crude would
go to CPCL.
Along with Chennai Petroleum, IOC controls about a third of
the 5 million bpd of refining capacity in India.
"CPCL has been procuring
Basra Light and Basra Heavy crude oil from Iraq and Basra Medium was procured
recently for the first time, this is after the introduction of this grade by
SOMO supplier to the market for the first time," the company said in a statement
to Reuters.
Iraq has increased crude exports by introducing Basra Medium
after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies
agreed to raise output by 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) in
January.
"Basra Medium helps fill the gap of a shortage of heavy oil
globally due to sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, declining production in
Colombia and Mexico and OPEC+ quotas," analytics firm Kpler said.
As
MRC reported
earlier, India’s top refiner Indian Oil Corp has been operating at 100%
capacity since early November, 2020, as local fuel demand has recovered,
its chairman S.M. Vaidya said late last year. IOC has been gradually raising
crude runs at its plants, which plunged to about 39% at the beginning of April
when a nationwide coronavirus lockdown hit fuel demand.
We remind that
IOC is expanding its
petrochemical capacity by more than 70% from its current 3.2 million tonnes a
year. It is also on new technologies that reduces the cost of producing
petrochemicals.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report,
Russia's estimated polyethylene (PE) consumption totalled 1,990,280 tonnes in
the first eleven months of 2020, up by 1% year on year. Only high density
polyethylene (HDPE) shipments increased. At the same time, polypropylene (PP)
shipments to the Russian market reached 1 090,900 tonnes in the first eleven
months of 2020 (calculated using the formula: production, minus exports, plus
imports, excluding producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply of
exclusively PP random copolymer increased.
Indian Oil Corporation
Limited, or IndianOil, is an Indian state-owned oil and gas corporation with its
headquarters in New Delhi, India. |
