Asia Fuel Oil-Sri Lanka delays 360KT tender by 2 weeks

SINGAPORE, April 15 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's Ceylon Petroleum Corp (Ceypetco) has delayed the award of a 12-month term tender to buy 360,000 tonnes of utility-grade fuel oil to conduct a further price review, a company source said on Tuesday.
The state-run refiner will extend the validity date for this tender by two weeks to April 29, as it seeks more time to examine bidders' prices and review the quality of fuel oil required by the power sector, he said.
"We have already notified bidders that we need another two weeks to decide," he added.
Traders said the tender could be cancelled and re-offered to the market at a later date.
"I don't think they took into account the kind of offers they were going to receive on the tender, now they seem a little shell shocked," a trader familiar with the tender negotiations said.
Ceypetco issued the tender last month on behalf of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), which was seeking supply for a new power plant in Muthurajawela.
The tender closed on April 1 and was originally expected to be awarded to Brazil's Petrobras, which offered to sell the low-sulphur fuel oil at a premium of $42.27 a tonne to Singapore spot 180-centistoke (cst) quotes.
Ceypetco planned to purchase on a cost-and-freight basis (C&F) to Colombo, for 12 monthly shipments of 30,000 tonnes each starting in June 2008, or a total of 360,000 tonnes between June 2008 and May 2009.