BEIJING/SINGAPORE: Oil major BP discharged 130,000 tonnes, or nearly 1 million barrels, of Angolan crude to a Chinese independent refiner last week, after holding the oil on water for more than two months amid slowing Chinese demand and multi-year high oil prices, sources with knowledge of the offloading said on Wednesday.Texas, a supertanker charted by BP carrying about 2 million barrels of Angolan crude, discharged part of the cargo in mid-April at Qingdao and was slated to offload the rest at Rizhao, another port in Shandong, shortly after.
Instead, the tanker had been anchored off the coast until last week, when it discharged at the Rizhao terminal 130,000 tonnes of Cabinda crude to Shandong Qingyuan Group.
Qingyuan, which is based at Linzi in the province of Shandong and operates a 5.2 million-tonne-per-year (104,000-barrel-per-day) refiner, is a regular customer of BP which has expanded its crude oil marketing to Chinese independent refiners over the last three years.
Qingyuan has received an annual crude import quota of 4.04 million tonnes, and is one of the largest independently-run lubricant producers.
BP did not reply to Reuters' request for comment. Qingyuan didn't respond to a Reuters fax seeking comment.