GENEVA (Reuters) – Swiss-based commodities trader Trafigura has bought oil which the South Sudanese government claims was seized by Sudan, its northern neighbor and former civil war foe, industry sources told Reuters, and is now in a legal dispute over ownership.

The tanker of crude oil is one of three seized cargoes forming part of some $815 million in oil revenues that South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir accused Sudan of “looting” and which the government in Khartoum said provided compensation for unpaid transit fees.

GENEVA, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Petroplus’s UK administrator
said on Sunday that it had bought a cargo of crude oil for
processing at its Coryton plant as it seeks to conclude
negotiations with interested parties to save the plant.

Switzerland’s Petroplus, the owner of the 175,000 barrel per
day plant near London, has filed for insolvency, and
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has maintained operations at
Coryton since Jan. 24.

NEUCHATEL, Switzerland, Jan 31 (Reuters) -
Switzerland’s Cressier refinery, owned by debt-crippled
Petroplus, has obtained a two-month grace period under
Swiss law to keep creditors at bay as it seeks to reorganise its
business, a regional court ruled on Tuesday.

The court said the ruling would be in place until March 31,
2012 and obliged the refinery to maintain a minimum level of
activity and to pay its workers.

NEUCHATEL, Switzerland, Jan 30 (Reuters) -
Switzerland’s Cressier refinery, owned by ailing independent
oil firm Petroplus, has attracted as many as 10
interested parties, Thierry Grosjean, economy minister of the
Swiss canton of Neuchatel, told Reuters on Monday.

Petroplus is filing for insolvency after battling with high
debt and poor refining margins, leaving the fate of five
European plants unclear.

ZURICH/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The EU is banning not only imports of Iranian oil but also crude purchased by European companies, including Total and Royal Dutch Shell, for sale to non-EU destinations, lawyers and officials familiar with the terms of the sanctions told Reuters.

The European Union on Monday embargoed imports of oil from Iran and imposed a number of other economic sanctions, joining the United States in a new round of measures aimed at slowing Tehran’s nuclear development programme.

GENEVA/LONDON (Reuters) – Turkish refiner Tupras plans to cut its dependence on imports of Iranian oil and will meet Saudi Arabian authorities this month, industry sources familiar with the company’s strategy said on Thursday, as Western powers crack down on Iran’s oil sales.

Turkey imports more than 30 percent of its daily consumption from Iran and has so far given no indication that it will comply with a planned European Union import embargo on Iranian crude.

GENEVA, Jan 13 (Reuters) – A Swiss union has launched
an online petition calling on its economy minister to match the
French government’s pledge and intervene directly in talks with
bank lenders to protect refiner Petroplus from
bankruptcy.

The Swiss-based refiner has reached a temporary agreement
with 13 banking lenders who froze about $1 billion in December
but Petroplus investors and workers are still concerned about
the future of the firm and its five European plants in the
absence of a long-term deal.

LONDON, Dec 30 (Reuters) – Brent oil fell below $107 a
barrel on Friday, pressured by doubts that Iran will disrupt
supply and by an expected drop in European demand for crude due
to refinery outages, although the benchmark was still on track
to post a 13 percent gain for 2011.

Brent is poised to close the year at a record-high average
of around $111 a barrel, surpassing the previous annual peak of
just below $100 reached in 2008. With the exception of 2008, oil
prices have closed higher every year for the last decade.

LONDON (Reuters) – Brent crude oil was steady near $108 a barrel on Friday as Iran’s threats to halt flows through a vital oil channel offset a surprise jump in U.S. oil stocks, leaving oil on track to post a 14 percent annual gain.

The benchmark is poised to close the year at a record-high average of around $111 a barrel, surpassing the previous annual peak of just below $100 reached in 2008. With the exception of 2008, oil prices have closed higher every year for the last decade.

LAGOS/LONDON, Dec 22 (Reuters) – Nigerian authorities
were putting emergency measures in place on Thursday to prevent
an oil spill from a Royal Dutch Shell facility, the
biggest leak in Nigeria for more than 13 years, washing up on
its densely populated coast.

Tuesday’s spill, which Shell said happened while a tanker
was loading oil, has led to the complete shutdown of the
company’s 200,000 barrel per day (bpd) Bonga facility, about 120
kilometres off the coast of the West African nation.