India‘s BPCL, China’s Unipec in 1st Naphtha Term Deal-traders

India's Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) has signed a four-month naphtha sales deal with Chinese trading house Unipec, the first term deal between the two parties, traders said on Friday.

Unipec will lift a 35,000-tonne cargo each month from Kochi port from July to October, or a total of 140,000 tonnes during the four-month period.

The deal was done at around $1.00 a tonne premium to the refiner's own pricing formula on a free-on-board (FOB) basis, the traders said.

BPCL which holds two other short-term naphtha contracts with Japan's Idemitsu Kosan, has separately sold a 38,000-tonne spot cargo for June 21-23 loading from Mumbai to another Chinese trader - PetroChina - at a premium of about $40 to $41 a tonne to Middle East quotes on FOB basis, traders added.

This made it the highest spot premium BPCL had fetched for a Mumbai spot cargo since it sold a May 9-11 loading in 2013 to Petro-Diamond.

Despite the fall, the current crack value is still nearly 7 percent higher than the average value for January to April due to strong demand most of this year and reduced recent Indian supplies because of a string of refinery maintenance.

BPCL, for instance, sold close to 480,000 tonnes of naphtha for January to June 2014 lifting from various ports including Bina and Haldia, down by about 30 percent compared to the volumes sold for the same period last year. 

（in.reuters.com  Edited by Topco）