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Saudi Arabian refiner Saudi Aramco has sold four new lots of straight-run A960 fuel oil for loading in May, market sources said on Thursday.

Aramco is now reported to have sold 11 cargoes, or almost 1 million tonnes, of A960 since the Ras Tanura refinery suffered an outage in early March, which has prevented it from processing the fuel oil as feedstock.

Two of the cargoes are reported to have been sold to Japan's Itochu Petroleum Japan Ltd., whilst oil major Total and an unnamed trading firm based in the U.S are said to have purchased the other two 80,0000 - 90,0000-tonne fuel oil lots.

The prices for the May cargoes ranged from between a premium of $2 to $4 per tonne to Singapore spot quotes on a free-on-board (FOB) basis, industry sources said.

The A960 cargoes are high-quality feedstocks used by Asian refineries to process fuel oil into higher-value products such as gas oil and naptha. Aramco normally tends to only offer this product to other companies when it is not able to utilize the fuel oil itself.

Previous A960 parcels for late-March to early-April loading were bought by ConocoPhillips, Itochu, Vitol and an unknown refiner.

Total and Itochu were said to have purchased their respective cargoes - for loading on Aptil 12-13 and 18-20 - at a premium of approximately $3 per tonne to Singapore spot quotes on a free-on-board (FOB) basis.

Meanwhile, Aramco has also recently offered three cargoes of 380-centistoke (cst) for export since March, due to testing of a new thermal cracking unit at the Red Sea town of Rabigh, a process which is said to be producing excess volumes of A962.

At least two of the cargoes were purchased by French oil company Total for loading on March 20-24 and April 5-7. The French refiner has already said that it will cut production of fuel oil due to poor margins and demand. Overall, the company says it will close 10-20 percent of its overall 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) of capacity at its eight refineries in France, Germany and the Netherlands.

This is the third time in three years that Aramco has sold large volumes of fuel oil following an outage at its hydrocracking unit.

Last year the state-run firm sold similar straight-run fuel oil cargoes during the month of February following an outage at the 44,000 barrels-per-day hydrocracker unit. Delays to the restart of the Ras Tanura hydrocracker in June 2007 also led to Aramco selling fuel oil cargoes for export.

An A960 parcel was also offered in October 2005 when a scheduled restart of the hydrocracker was also delayed.

The 44,000 barrels-per-day hydrocracker was previously expected to restart around mid-May. However, the recent uncertainty concerning the restart date of the unit may mean further delays are just around the corner for the problem-ridden hydrocracker.