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• Hindustan Petroleum Corp has offered a rare high sulphur gasoil cargo for export following an outage at its 166,000 barrels per day (bpd) Vizag refinery earlier this month, industry sources said on Thursday. HPCL is usually a net importer of diesel and rarely exports the product unless there is an issue with its refinery, they said."They never export...this is probably a distress cargo," an India-based source said.A diesel hydro-desulphurisation unit at state-run HPCL's 166,000 barrels per day (bpd) Vizag refinery in southern India was shut for unplanned maintenance about one to two weeks ago, traders said.Details on the shutdown and when it is expected to re-start are unclear.

• HPCL officials declined to comment on the matter. The company is now offering 35,000 to 40,000 tonnes of 1 percent sulphur gasoil for loading from Vizag over Jan. 18-23 through a spot tender which closes on Friday.The 1 percent sulphur gasoil is usually used as feedstock in the refinery's desulphurisation unit which in removes the sulphur to produce better quality transportation fuel.Due to the high sulphur content of the gasoil cargo, it could likely be used for blending or as feedstock to be further processed in refineries if there was spare capacity to do so, a Singapore-based trader said.HPCL had earlier issued a similar cargo for loading in early January, but cancelled that tender and re-issued it, traders said.Due to the refinery outage, the company had this week bought 140,000 tonnes of diesel for delivery in late January and February, its first imports in nine months.

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