BPC Tenders 170mb Naphtha Parcel

Bangladesh Petroleum Corp (BPC) issued an international tender to sell 170,000 barrels of naphtha on Wednesday for Oct. 27-29 loading from Chittagong, a company official said.

The tender will close on Oct. 13, with validity up to Oct. 16.

The offer came as the discount on the Asian naphtha price differential for first-half November and first-half December widened to $3.50 a tonne to reach its lowest in six sessions as an excess of cargoes persisted.

BPC sold a same-size cargo to Vitol Asia at premiums of $1.32 a barrel to Singapore quotes, the highest since March 2013.

Apart from exporting, BPC sells naphtha domestically to privately owned Super Petrochemical.

BPC had earlier finalised second-half term contracts for refined oil products at mostly unchanged premiums.

Suppliers for Bangladesh's middle distillates contracts are Kuwait Petroleum Corp (KPC), Malaysia's Petronas, Emirates National Oil Co (ENOC), Philippines National Oil Co, Vietnam's Petrolimex, Indonesia's Bumi Siak Pusako, PetroChina and Unipec.

BPC is also buying 700,000 tonnes of Murban crude from Abu Dhabi National Oil Co and another 600,000 tonnes of Arab Light crude from Saudi Aramco in 2014 for the Eastern Refinery, up more than 8 percent from a year earlier. (Reporting by Ruma Paul