North Sea Crude-Forties slides to three-month low; Vitol offers floating barrels

LONDON, March 8 (Reuters) - North Sea Forties differentials traded at their lowest in three months on Wednesday, after Glencore (Frankfurt: 8GC.F - news) bought a cargo at a steep discount to dated Brent and Vitol continued to offer barrels from floating storage.

Forties changed hands at a discount of 75 cents to the dated Brent benchmark, its lowest since the first week in December.

Vitol was again offering multiple cargoes of Forties, but without finding a buyer. It continued to offer crude for loading via ship-to-ship transfer from two separate VLCCs.

In addition to its long position in physical North Sea oil, Vitol has also been offering barrels of Qua Iboe out of storage in South Africa, which has weighed on Nigerian diffs.

FLOWS

* The Baltic Glory, which loaded at Hound Point a week ago, has dropped anchor off Southwold. The vessel was originally chartered by Shell (LSE: RDSB.L - news) to take Forties to Rotterdam.

* Statoil (LSE: 0M2Z.L - news) has booked a second suezmax to take Norwegian crude across the Atlantic (Shanghai: 600558.SS - news) this month, according to Reuters shipping fixtures.

* The company has chartered the Nordic Mistral to load at Mongstad, the terminal that handles Troll and Statfjord crudes, to load in the early part of next week, as well as the Astra, which is due to load towards the end of the week.

* Most Troll production feeds Statoil's 205,000-bpd Mongstad refinery. Based on Reuters Trade Flows data, some 22 million barrels of Troll shipped last year, of which nearly 13 million barrels went to the United States, Canada and the Bahamas.

WINDOW SUMMARY

FORTIES

* BP sold Glencore a cargo loading March 19-21 at 75 cents below the dated Brent price.

* ENI (LSE: 0N9S.L - news) offered a cargo loading March 28-30 at 35 cents below dated Brent.

* Vitol withdrew offers for two cargo loading via STS (Shanghai: 603322.SS - news) from March 20-25 at Scapa Flow, one from the VLCC Trikwong Venture at a 20-cent discount to dated Brent and a second from the Desimi at the same price.

EKOFISK/BRENT

* Gunvor offered a cargo of Ekofisk for loading March 31-April 2 at 10 cents below dated Brent.

* Vitol withdrew an offer for a cargo of Ekofisk for loading March 31-April 2 at a 10 cent premium to dated Brent.

* Vitol withdrew an offer for a cargo of Brent for loading April 1-3 at parity with the dated benchmark.

(Reporting by Amanda Cooper; Editing by David Evans)