All crudes price ‘benchmarked’

ALL crudes, including Papua New Guinea’s Kutubu crude oil purchased for PNG’s Puma Energy Napa Napa refinery, is price benchmarked off Brent crude, says country general manager Jim Collings, pictured.
He made the comments as global news agencies run information and analysis following the recent Saudi Arabian crude processing facility attack.
“Since the attack, Brent crude hit US$71.95 (K244.7)/bbl before settling at $67.78 (K230.5)/bbl on Monday’s close, up US$7.56 (K25.7)/bbl from Friday’s close (WTI had a high of US$64.93 (K220.8)/bbl before settling US$61.54 (K209.3)/bbl). These are the biggest market moves since the Gulf Wars,” Collings said.
Kutubu crude is the local PNG crude produced from the oil and gas fields in the country.
“The crude price has then put pressure on the finished product grades of petrol, diesel and Jet A1. As PNG’s finished product pricing is benchmarked against international prices, we will see any maintained increases pass through to the market over the next one to two months,” Collings told The National yesterday.
“There is potential, however, for prices to be positively impacted by the release of strategic stocks (Saudi and US),” Collings said.
“This factor, along with a number of refinery’s around the world about to shut down for maintenance and crude supply balances are sufficient which limits crude demand and thus could have a dampening effect on increasing prices.
“In turn, this means we may not see a continuous spike in prices,” he said
“All is really conditional on the US and Saudi response to the attack which could increase pricing volatility and market uncertainty.”