Chinese refiner Rongsheng Petrochemical has purchased a total of 2.65 million barrels of heavy crude oil from the Americas for February delivery, according to trade sources on Friday.
These include three Canadian crude cargoes of 550,000 barrels each, set to be exported from the Trans-Mountain pipeline (TMX), as well as 1 million barrels of Ecuadorian Oriente crude, sources said.
Rongsheng does not typically comment on commercial deals.
Vitol and BP each sold one cargo of Canadian Access Western Blend (AWB) crude while ExxonMobil will deliver one cargo of Kearl Lake crude, they said.
The TMX cargoes were sold at a discount of $4 a barrel to ICE Brent on cost-and-freight (C&F) basis, they said.
AWB is a type of heavy and highly acidic diluted bitumen produced by Canadian Natural Resources and MEG Energy while Kearl Lake is of a similar quality.
PetroChina sold the Oriente crude cargo, one of the sources said.
(Reporting by Florence Tan and Siyi Liu; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)