Tapis crude is a Malaysian crude oil used as a pricing benchmark in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

. Tapis is very light, with an

API gravity The American Petroleum Institute gravity, or API gravity, is a measure of how heavy or light a petroleum liquid is compared to water: if its API gravity is greater than 10, it is lighter and floats on water; if less than 10, it is heavier and sinks ...

of 43°-45°, and very

sweet Sweetness is a basic taste most commonly perceived when eating foods rich in sugars. Sweet tastes are generally regarded as pleasurable. In addition to sugars like sucrose, many other chemical compounds are sweet, including aldehydes, ketone ...

, with only about 0.04% sulfur. While it is not traded on a market like

Brent Crude Brent Crude may refer to any or all of the components of the Brent Complex, a physically and financially traded oil market based around the North Sea of Northwest Europe; colloquially, Brent Crude usually refers to the price of the ICE (Intercon ...

West Texas Intermediate West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is a grade or mix of crude oil; the term is also used to refer to the spot price, the futures price, or assessed price for that oil. In colloquial usage, WTI usually refers to the WTI Crude Oil futures contract tr ...

(WTI), it is often used as an oil marker or price referencing indicator for Asia and Australia. The price of Tapis in Singapore is often considerably higher than the price of

benchmark crude oils Benchmark may refer to: Business and economics * Benchmarking, evaluating performance within organizations * Benchmark price * Benchmark (crude oil), oil-specific practices Science and technology * Benchmark (surveying), a point of known elevatio ...

such as Brent or West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the more commonly referenced in market commentaries. This is because its lightness (i.e. higher ° API) allows for greater production of higher-value products, such as petrol, than from Brent or WTI. Its high price is also due to the purity of the blend. Its extremely low sulfur content means it requires less refinery processing than sourer crude oils, and hence a lower processing cost. The Tapis field, located off the coast of

Terengganu Terengganu (; Terengganu Malay: ''Tranung'', Jawi: ), formerly spelled Trengganu or Tringganu, is a sultanate and constitutive state of federal Malaysia. The state is also known by its Arabic honorific, ''Dāru l- Īmān'' ("Abode of Faith" ...

in the

South China Sea The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by the shores of South China (hence the name), in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan and northwestern Phi ...

was discovered in 1969 with production starting in 1978. ExxonMobil holds a 30% stake, the rest being held by state-owned Petronas. , production is approximately 300,000 barrels per day.

References

Benchmark crude oils {{Petroleum-stub

See also

References