The Department of Energy on Wednesday issued a request for proposals for up to 3 million barrels of domestic sour crude oil for delivery this month to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Sellers are required to submit proposals by 11 a.m. ET on Jan. 10, and the agency said it intends to award contracts on Jan. 19. The acquisition of crude is also subject to the requirement for the use of U.S. flagged vessels.

The solicitation seeks crude with an API gravity of 28.5 to 35 and total sulfur content within a 0.51%-2.5% range.

The RFP doesn't commit the government to buy crude and DOE said awards will be based on a firm, fixed-price basis, adding that multiple awards could be made.

DOE said discussions with bidders will be limited to any necessary clarifications and asked that all proposals include best pricing and technical terms.

The agency said that as of Dec. 26 it had agreed to buy 2,993,692 million bbl of SPR crude for March delivery. The winning bids were from Sunoco Partners Marketing & Terminals (1,197,485 bbl), Macquarie Commodities Trading US (898,105 bbl) and Phillips 66 (898,102 bbl).

This content was created by Oil Price Information Service, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. OPIS is run independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

--Reporting by Denton Cinquegrana, dcinquegrana@opisnet.com; Editing by Jeff Barber, jbarber@opisnet.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 03, 2024 12:15 ET (17:15 GMT)