North Sea Crude-Brent, Forties diffs edge higher on tight programmes

LONDON, Jan 4 (Reuters) - The differential for Brent Blend edged higher on Thursday owing to a tighter January programme as a short programme became even shorter with the deferral of two January cargoes to February.

* The Forties differential also rose slightly but the bid/offer gap remained wide.

* The month of February will now have five Brent cargoes, while January will have three, including one from December.

* February will see 18 cargoes of Forties load after 12 cargoes were deferred from the January schedule. Loadings of the grade were stopped in December when the 450,000 barrel per day Forties pipeline feeding the port was shutdown after a crack was found.

* The Antonis Aframax tanker was the first to load crude at Hound Point since Dec (Shanghai: 600875.SS - news) . 12. The Antonis left the terminal loaded with oil on Dec. 31, according to Reuters ship tracking.

* In February, the volume of the 12 North Sea grades tracked by Reuters will be at its lowest since September 2014, mainly due to the outage of the Forties pipeline.

WINDOW SUMMARY

* No cargoes traded.

* Gunvor bid for a cargo of Brent Blend at dated Brent plus 45 cents a barrel loading Jan. 26-30.

* Shell (LSE: RDSB.L - news) bid for a cargo of Forties at dated Brent plus 25 cents a barrel loading Jan. 21-23.

* Statoil (LSE: 0M2Z.L - news) offered a cargo of Forties at dated Brent plus 69 cents a barrel loading Jan. 31-Feb. 2.

* BP offered a cargo of Ekofisk at dated Brent plus $1.05 a barrel loading Jan. 20-24. (Reporting By Julia Payne, editing by David Evans)