Juba sells its crude export cargoes by tender. The latest offered a single 1mn barrel cargo for lifting on 30-31 October. The tender was won by Netherlands-based Trafigura as part of a cargo deal agreed earlier in the year: this is the second of three 1mn-barrel cargoes against which the trader made a single prepayment totaling $75mn. Under the deal it will pay the balance over and above $25mn on each cargo. It lifted the first of the three cargoes in July, and is expected to lift the third by the end of the year.
Trafigura has been the largest trader of South Sudanese government crude in 2016 with 3.6mn barrels (see table). It has marketed more than a third of government oil trades this year, and almost two-thirds in the past four months. This has already surpassed the 2.6mn barrels it sold in 2015, when it was the third-largest trader of government crude with 12% of the total. The pre-payment deal is the latest in a series of such arrangements agreed between the two parties. Last year Trafigura paid $50mn up front against two 1mn barrel cargoes for delivery in late 2015 and early 2016 (MEES, 30 October 2015). It also signed up to a pre-financing deal in 2013 covering eight cargoes each of 1mn barrels for lifting over a 16-month period. The government is in the market to line up further pre-financing deals for “whatever it can get,” according to an oil trading source. (CONTINUED - 457 WORDS)
