RI crude exports higher than expected

RI crude exports higher than expected

SINGAPORE (Reuters): Indonesian state oil company, Pertamina has substantially raised its official allocation of January crudes after initially offering very small volumes to affiliates and term customers, traders said yesterday.

Pertamina had earlier verbally informed its crude lifters that it would only offer 7,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) of Minas and no Widuri or Cinta for January.

But latest checks revealed that the final official allocation to two companies alone are well above this.

The two companies, one term buyer and one affiliate, will lift in total 10,000-bpd of Minas, 6,000-bpd of Cinta and 4,000-bpd of Duri.

Information on the total volumes allocated to Pertamina's four affiliates and three term customers were not available yet, traders said.

"7,000 bpd of Minas and zero of Widuri and Cinta was what Pertamina had verbally said the total January allocations could be, although that was not officially written on paper yet," said one term buyer.

He said that the affiliates and term buyers were very unhappy with the volumes that Pertamina wanted to allocate and pushed Pertamina to come up with more supplies.

"Now we've officially got double what we expected for Minas," he added.

In December, Pertamina allocated 33,000 bpd of Minas, and a total of 20,000 bpd of Widuri and Cinta.

But this was already lower that November allocations of 51,000 bpd for Minas, 20,000 bpd of Widuri and 26,000 bpd of Cinta.

Traders said that volumes of other Indonesian crudes such as Duri, Belida and Bontang condensate had already been confirmed early last week.

Traders said that Pertamina had cited a rise in domestic refining capacity as the reason for the lower available supplies of these grades.

But they said another factor could be an attempt by Pertamina to limit spending in the face of the Asian financial crisis, by reducing crude imports and using more domestic crudes.