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Asia Crude-India ONGC to issue only 1 Sokol Sept cargo
Posted by Yogesh on Wednesday, 9 July, 2008
NEW DELHI, July 9 – India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp will issue only one tender to sell 700,000 barrels of Sakhalin-1 light sweet Sokol crude for September loading as output from the field is falling, a company official said on Wednesday.
The state-run explorer regularly sells two parcels of 700,000 barrels of the grade via tenders each month, but in June only offered one cargo.
“Production is declining. It is a natural decline … For September loading, there will be only one cargo for OVL,” Anupam Mathur, commercial director at the firm’s overseas investment arm, ONGC Videsh Ltd , told Reuters.
He said the firm would decide by the end of this month or early next on the number of cargoes for October lifting.
ONGC holds a 20-percent stake in the field, which is operated by ExxonMobil . Production peaked briefly at 250,000 barrels per day last year but is expected to fall to 160,000-165,000 bpd this year.
Russia, the world’s second-largest oil exporter, increased output by 2.3 percent last year to 9.87 million bpd with the growth coming mainly on the back of higher production of Sokol at Sakhalin-1 in Russia’s Far East.
Source Reuters
