Colombia's push for the 1 million barrels/day crude oil production goal by the end of this year has also increased its need for heavy crude oil diluent products, such as light virgin naphtha and natural gasoline, according to a survey of Latin American naphtha market sources.
Each month, state-led oil company Ecopetrol imports about 600,000 barrels of diluent of an API gravity between 58 and 84 degrees, maximum sulfur content of 0.07%, and maximum RVP of 12 psi, sources said.
"Colombia takes all [diluent] that it can find, it is to dilute [crude oil] with which it can mix different qualities," one Latin American naphtha market trader said Wednesday.
That includes naphtha, or natural gasoline, from Pemex in Mexico, from Petrotrin in Trinidad and Tobago, from Pluspetrol in Peru, and from Repsol in Algeria, according to the trader.
In 2010, Pemex begun providing Colombia with "Cactus" naphtha, produced in southeastern Mexico, according to a second trader familiar with that product.
Cactus has a typical specific gravity of 67 and is well known as a petrochemical feedstock mainly used for cracking. Before Colombia increased its crude oil production, Cactus was typically exported to the US Gulf Coast, according to traders there.
Argentina's Pluspetrol, which is the only exporter of Peruvian Pisco natural gasoline, has sold several cargoes of the 8-11 RVP, 86% paraffins natural gasoline this year and some of those barrels have been blended into Colombia's crude oil mix, according to sources familiar with that operation.
Pisco natural gasoline was a typical diluent for Canadian tar sands and Switzerland-based Glencore was the usual provider of that naphtha into Canada, according to sources.
Colombia produced 891,000 b/d of crude oil equivalent in September and expects to produce 950,000 b/d this month.
"We can only expect [Colombia] to keep importing more [diluent] as long as their crude [output] grows," a third naphtha trader said.
