Asia oil buyers, shippers go on alert after Saudi ship, facility attacks

The attack came two days after the sabotage of four oil tankers - two of them owned by Saudi Arabia - near the United Arab Emirates .[SINGAPORE] Asian shippers and refiners have put ships heading to the Middle East on alert and are expecting a possible rise in marine insurance premiums after recent attacks on Saudi oil tankers and pipeline facilities, industry sources said on Tuesday.

The attacks pushed up global oil prices by more than 1 per cent on Monday, adding to rising costs for Asian refiners, who are now paying the highest premiums in years for spot cargoes in an already tight market after Washington stopped sanction waivers for Iranian oil buyers this month."It's a headache for North Asian refiners who are heavily reliant on Middle East oil supplies. We are currently monitoring the situation. It's an unfavourable factor for the overall crude oil market .

"We had a ship which was refuelling at Fujairah when the incident occurred. Fortunately nothing happened," said KY Lin, spokesman at Taiwan's Formosa Petrochemical.Japanese shipper Nippon Yusen has already decided to refrain from sending tankers to Fujairah for bunkering, maintenance or crew swaps except for emergencies, a company spokesman said.

Risk premium increases would be inevitable, however, if security in the region continued to deteriorate, he added.Noriaki Sakai, an executive officer at Idemitsu Kosan, Japan's second-largest refiner, told reporters on Wednesday that while there is no impact on oil loading or ship operations, the company is closely watching the situation.

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