DHAKA: Bangladesh Petroleum Corp (BPC) has issued an international tender to sell 170,000 barrels of naphtha for Feb. 21-23 loading from Chittagong, a company official said on Monday. The tender will close on Feb. 8, with validity up to Feb. 15.
The tender comes as Asia’s naphtha crack hovers around a three-month low — standing at $89.83 a tonne on Monday — with a stubborn glut weighing heavily on seller sentiment. State-owned BPC last sold a cargo of the same size to Swiss Singapore Overseas Enterprises at a discount of 10 cents to Singapore quotes in June.
Bangladesh’s sole Eastern Refinery, which has a capacity of 33,000 barrels per day, produces 1.26 million barrels of naphtha a year. BPC will buy 600,000 tonnes of Murban crude from Abu Dhabi National Oil Co and another 600,000 tonnes of Arab Light from Saudi Aramco this year for the refinery.
BPC has also finalised term contracts with 14 companies for refined oil product imports in the first half of 2016 at lower premiums than last year. Apart from exporting, BPC sells around 30,000 tonnes of naphtha domestically to privately-owned Super Petrochemical annually.
