SINGAPORE: Saudi Aramco has further extended the shutdown of its Ras Tanura hydrocracker, after a planned early-June restart failed, prompting sales of excess cracked A961 fuel oil, trading sources said yesterday.

The state oil company is offering 90,000 tonnes of cracked A961 fuel oil for July 17-18 lifting from Ras Tanura — its fourth such cargo in the past month, and an unusual move during the peak summer demand season, traders said.

During summer in the Middle East, Aramco usually channels barrels for domestic power generation, cutting back on exports. It started importing fuel oil last summer for the first time due to insufficient domestic supply.

“Rastan is spewing out all these A961 barrels because the hydrocracker is still down—it never came back up at all since the outage in early March,” said an trader with a European firm. Aramco has already sold three A961 cargoes, scheduled for loading on June 21-23, June 27-29 and July 7-8.

Two of the parcels went to Vitol and the third was bought by FAL Oil. The prices ranged from a discount of $1 per tonne to a premium of $2.50 a tonne to Singapore spot quotes on a free-on-board (FOB) basis, traders said.

The 44,000 barrels per day hydrocracker was originally scheduled to restart in early June after repeated delays following an early-March outage.