Offer prices for Caspian CPC Blend crude oil dropped sharply this week, according to trade sources, as exports of the grade continue to be impacted by drone strikes in the Black Sea and weather-related delays.
ExxonMobil, a shareholder in the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, was offering on Thursday a 120,000-tonne CPC Blend cargo at a $1.35 per barrel discount to benchmark dated Brent in the Platts window, a service run by oil-index publisher SP Global Commodity Insights, trade sources said.
No buyers stepped forward, and the offer was withdrawn.
A day earlier, the US oil major had offered the same cargo at a 40 cent discount, which one physical oil trader had described at the time as a cheap offer relative to current market prices.
Earlier this week, Kazakhstan urged the US and Europe to help secure oil exports after at least two oil tankers - one chartered by Chevron - were struck in the Black Sea by unidentified drones on Tuesday. CPC Blend is a feedstock for many European refiners.
"We are monitoring the situation, of course, additional costs may apply, but this should also be reflected in the grade's price," another trade source said, adding that there had been no company order to suspend purchases.
CPC handles around 1.5 per cent of global oil supply and 80 per cent of Kazakhstan's oil exports. Its regular customers include a handful of Asian refiners as well as European firms.
CPC Blend loadings are taking place from one single point mooring out of three (SPM-1), after SPM-2 was taken offline by a Ukrainian drone strike in November. Maintenance works on SPM-3 have faced weather-related delays since December.
CPC does not usually comment on daily terminal operations and earlier declined to comment on the recent drone strikes.
(Reporting by Reuters reporters in London and Moscow; Editing by Alex Lawler and Mark Potter)
