A crude oil tanker carrying 95,000 metric tonnes is scheduled to arrive in Sri Lanka on April 26, Ceylon Petroleum Corporation Managing Director Mayura Neththikumarage confirmed on Friday, with refined product cargoes to follow within days.

The MD told NewsFirst that a vessel carrying 9,500 metric tonnes of diesel will arrive on April 27 and a separate 36,000-tonne petrol cargo is expected on April 28. With those three deliveries scheduled in a single week, Neththikumarage said fuel stocks in the country are sufficient to meet demand until the end of June.

The April 26 crude tanker is the first full-sized crude consignment scheduled since the 97,500-tonne cargo that arrived on April 17 at the height of the Hormuz transit-cost spike. CPC has used the Sapugaskanda refinery to process crude into the local product mix, leaning on parcel-sized refined cargoes from India and Singapore to bridge supply through the most acute weeks of the Middle East crisis.

The 9,500-tonne diesel and 35,000-tonne petrol shipments previously confirmed for April 27 and end-month align with the new schedule. The petrol delivery has been brought forward to April 28 in the latest CPC update.

Neththikumarage did not disclose unit pricing for any of the three cargoes. Earlier April shipments carried diesel premiums of $48–50 per barrel against a pre-war benchmark of around $3, with crude landed at $71.99 per barrel for the April 17 cargo before global Brent later pushed past $105 on Iran’s refusal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The end-June stocks-sufficiency statement is the most extended forward outlook CPC has issued since the start of the conflict.

In a separate statement on Saturday morning, CPC Chairman D. J. Rajakaruna said the Corporation had secured stocks of petrol, diesel, Jet A-1 aviation fuel and crude oil sufficient to meet demand through the end of May, and that all shipments scheduled for that window had already been paid for. Rajakaruna said the supply strategy combined long-term procurement agreements with spot-market purchases as global energy markets remained unstable on continued Middle East tensions.

Sources