ME crude: Oman offers prompt crude

The Middle East crude market was steady on Thursday as traders took stock of the official selling prices already announced by Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi National Oil Co and Qatar this week and waited for refiners to prepare their plans for the month. Saudi Arabia raised light crude prices to Asia, while Adnoc’s priced in higher differentials, and Qatar’s differentials remained unchanged. Oman offered 2m barrels of prompt crude, traders said on Thursday. The tender closed on Wednesday, they added. No further details were available. Oman’s ministry of oil and gas was not immediately reachable for comment. Last month, Oman sold 1 million barrels of prompt October crude to Mercuria Energy Trading, following an outage at its Minal Al Fahal refinery after a fire. Yemen has offered 2.6 million barrels of its January Masila crude through a tender that closes on Friday and is valid until on Monday. Shell bought three January Dubai partials from Phibro at $104.75 per barrel. An early-winter storm brought snow, rain and dangerous winds to the US Northeast, plunging many residents of the most populous region of the country back into darkness just as they were recovering from  Sandy.