Indian Oil buys Libyan crude at $23 premium to Brent

Mercuria sold the shipment as part of a four-million-barrel tender that also covered supplies from Nigeria, Angola and Iraq. The Libyan blend attracted the highest premium among the three African grades, all priced against Brent.

Details of the purchases emerged on 16 September, against a backdrop of disruption to Libyan production and Saudi exports. Oil prices had climbed more than $3 a barrel the previous day as interrupted loadings at Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu port heightened concerns about available supplies.

Libya’s National Oil Corporation said national output remained at roughly 1.4 million barrels a day despite shutdowns affecting facilities connected to the Hamada–Zawiya pipeline.

In a statement on 15 September, the corporation said a group of Petroleum Facilities Guard personnel had closed a pipeline valve, halting operations at the Hamada and Tahara fields and the NC5 station. It warned that a prolonged closure, or further forced shutdowns, could lead it to declare force majeure.

The other African purchases in Indian Oil’s tender were supplied by Glencore. These comprised one million barrels of Nigeria’s Utapate crude at about $21 a barrel above October Brent prices and the same volume of Angola’s Cabinda at approximately $17 above that benchmark.

Trafigura supplied the remaining million barrels of Iraq’s Basrah Heavy at around $14 a barrel above October Dubai prices, a separate benchmark from that used for the African cargoes.