Saudi Aramco has offered a sixth-straight cargo of fuel oil within the past three weeks, in the face of the tight Middle East and East Asian markets and following outages at its refineries, traders said on Monday.

The latest offering is 78,000 tonnes of 650-centistoke fuel oil, for October 11-13 loading from its joint-venture Samref facility in the Red Sea port of Yanbu, on a free-on-board (FOB) basis.

The cargo is offered via private negotiations and is expected to be concluded by late Monday.

"Aramco has certainly sold more than their usual volumes in the past month, mainly due to outages at Rabigh and then Ras Tanura," a Singapore-based Middle East trader said.

"It's fortunate for them that the market has been very strong but this Yanbu cargo is a regular offering."

The oil giant last sold a prompt A961 180-cst parcel, for September 23-25 lifting from its Ras Tanura plant, at undisclosed prices due to an outage at its 44,000 barrels per day hydrocracker.

It also sold a straight-run long-residue 380-cst parcel totalling 55,000 tonnes to a buyer in the Middle East, but details are not disclosed.

Before that, it had four 380-cst parcels, with three A962 lots coming from its Rabigh refinery that had suffered an outage and the remaining one from its Sasref refinery in Jubail.

The high-viscosity Yanbu parcel, for Sept. 25-27 loading, was sold by its joint-venture partner ExxonMobil to Brazil's Petrobras at a discount of $8.00-$9.00 a tonne to Singapore spot quotes, FOB.

Traders expect the current parcel to be transacted at similar, or slightly higher, levels, due to the market's strong fundamentals.

Reflecting the strong market, fuel oil's prompt October cracks was valued at a discount of $2.00 a barrel to Dubai crude at Friday's close, well above last year's average levels of around minus $10.00.

Traders said both the Middle East and East Asia markets have been tight since earlier this month, due to a shortage of Iranian supplies into Fujairah and diminishing flows from the West into Singapore.

About 3.1-3.2 million tonnes of Western arbitrage volumes are expected to land east Asia next month, down from 3.7-3.8 million tonnes this month and below average levels of 3.0-3.5 million tonnes as refiners globally have cut runs due to poor margins. – Reuters