Saudi Aramco has sold a little over a quarter of a million mt of LPG in the spot market for July loading due to a crude production hike by the Kingdom and stoppages at two cracker units there, trade sources said this week.
Saudi Aramco has so far sold 264,000 mt of refrigerated LPG in six cargoes of 44,000 mt each for July loading, the highest in a month so far this year.
"Yes, this month is very exceptional," said a source close to Saudi Aramco about the company's July spot availability.
Platts reported mid-June -- when the company offered its first July loading cargo -- that the Middle Eastern oil giant's planned hike in crude production for July was leading it to offer spot LPG to the market.
Saudi-owned newspaper al-Hayat reported June 10 quoting senior OPEC sources that Saudi Arabia planned to raise oil production from 8.8 million b/d in May to 10 million b/d in July and maintain that level for one month before reducing output in August, when demand falls.
"There are various factors. Besides higher crude output, it is because of the stoppage of some plants. I heard there is some problem with the Kayan cracker unit. There is some problem with another cracker too," said the source, but declined to name the second unit.
"I think the Petro Rabigh cracker has some troubles," said a Tokyo-based trader.
Sources at Saudi Kayan and Petro Rabigh could not be immediately reached for comment.
Rabigh Refining and Petrochemical Company, or Petro Rabigh, uses a little under 1 million mt/year, or roughly close to two full cargoes/month, of propane, which is believed to be supplied by Aramco, at its petrochemical complex.
Saudi Kayan Petrochemical Company's steam cracker complex located in Jubail Industrial City, centers around a naphtha- and LPG-fed steam cracker, which has a nameplate capacity of 1.33 million mt/year of ethylene. The unit is estimated to use close to 2 million mt/year of LPG for cracking.
Meanwhile, of the six full cargoes that Saudi Aramco has so far sold, four parcels are for loading from Ras Tanura, while the other two are for loading from Yanbu.
Of the two cargoes loading from Yanbu, one cargo comprises evenly split product, while the other is a full propane parcel. Trade sources said they thought that the evenly split parcel found a buyer in Naftomer, and that the cargo is believed to be moving to the Mediterranean, while the propane parcel found a home in Total.
Of the four cargoes that loaded from Ras Tanura, two are full propane parcels, one comprises product in a 3:1 propane-butane ratio, and the third consists of evenly split LPG.
Trade sources said that the evenly split cargo was bought by Statoil, the mixed LPG cargo by South Korean trader E1, and the two full propane parcels by Glencore and Vitol.
