Statoil books, Total cancels North Sea crude tankers for Korea

Statoil ASA hired a supertanker to haul North Sea crude from Mongstad in Norway to South Korea, while Total SA canceled a booking it made yesterday, according to Optima Shipbrokers Ltd.

Statoil booked a very large crude carrier, the Front Ariake, to transport crude from Mongstad to South Korea at an undisclosed rate, loading on Oct. 14 to Oct. 15, Athens-based Optima said today. Chartering and Shipping Services SA, a shipping unit of Total, canceled a charter for the VLCC Athina for shipment on Oct. 10 from the U.K.'s Hound Point, the export terminal for Forties blend.

An unprecedented export flow of North Sea crude is taking place after South Korea and the European Union signed a free trade agreement in July 2011. The accord exempted the Asian nation's refineries from a 3 percent tax on imports from the EU. Forties is one of four grades used to price Dated Brent, the benchmark for more than half of the world's oil.

An official at Total's press office in Paris said today that the company could not immediately comment on the matter. A phone call and an e-mail to Statoil's office in Stavanger, Norway were not returned.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc will pay $5 million for a VLCC operated by Nova Tankers to load crude from Hound Point to South Korea, according to reports from Kevin Sy, a Singapore-based freight-derivatives broker at Marex Spectron Group and Optima. An official at Shell's London office declined to comment when contacted yesterday by phone, asking not to be identified because the person was not authorized to speak on the matter.

Shell's booking, if successfully concluded, will be the first supertanker to load North Sea crude to Korea since the No. 1 jetty for VLCCs at Hound Point was shut at the start of August for six weeks of maintenance, according to data from ship- tracking IHS Inc. Vessel bookings are subject to change or may not be concluded.

Two smaller Suezmax-classed tankers loaded Forties over the past two months and are on the way to South Korea, IHS data showed. The Ottoman Nobility loaded on July 23 to July 25, and the Reef on Aug. 25 to Aug. 26.

Once the charters are fulfilled, it will bring the total shipments of North Sea crude to South Korea since December to 42 million barrels, according data compiled by Bloomberg.

Forties was at 7 cents a barrel less than Dated Brent today, down from an average of a premium of 26 cents last month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Details of fixtures since December are as follows. Freight costs are in millions of dollars. Hound Point, Scotland, is the loading point for Forties crude and Mongstad is the terminal for Norwegian Troll and Heidrun grades. A VLCC typically carries 2 million barrels of crude, twice the capacity of a Suezmax. (Bloomberg)