BUENOS AIRES: Argentina is due to receive a shipment of 1 million barrels of Escravos light crude from Nigeria in the next few days, a market source said.
The delivery is scheduled to arrive in Buenos Aires as soon as Sunday, the source said on the condition of not being named.
State-run YPF held a tender for the supplies on behalf of Enarsa, a state-owned company that handles much of the country’s fuel oil and natural gas imports.
This is the country’s first time importing Escravos crude, after already bringing in supplies of Bonny Light on separate occasions from Nigeria.
Both crude varieties are similar to Medanito, a crude produced in Argentina’s southwestern Neuquen Basin used by refiners around the country.
Medanito has been dwindling in production over the past few years as fields mature, leading the government to turn to overseas suppliers to make up for the shortfall. At first, it stepped up imports of diesel, fuel oil and gasoline to meet demand, but then shifted strategies last year to importing crude supplies to feed refineries running at low rates because of the decline in available supplies of Medanito.
Enarsa imports the supplies via YPF and sells them to refiners, including the leaders YPF, Shell, Axion Energy, Petrobras and Oil Combustibles.
In April, crude imports totaled 304,350 barrels, up 26.8% compared with 240,000 in April 2014, according to the latest Energy Secretariat data. Of the April imports, Axion handled 54% of the purchases and Oil Combustibles imported the rest. In the year-earlier period, Refinor, a refinery in the north, brought in all the crude supplies from abroad.
