ANTIQUES SHOPS

* Low monsoon rainfall sustains diesel demand

* Demand from Australia, Saudi Arabia keeps supply tight

By Jessica Jaganathan

SINGAPORE, July 6 (Reuters) - Indian Oil Corp Ltd (IOC) has bought 60,000 tonnes of diesel at the highest premium in more than six months as limited monsoon season rainfall keeps demand steady in India and amid tight supply in Asia, industry sources said on Friday.

The monsoon season usually reduces diesel demand in India as a fuel for field irrigation pumps, but a drier monsoon season in June has kept demand steady, traders said.. But IOC's import requirements could slow in coming months if the monsoon rains increases.

"Temperatures are cooling now, so at least diesel used for power generation will probably be reduced," said an India-based trading source.

IOC paid a premium of about $7.50-$7.60 per barrel above its own formula to PetroChina Co Ltd for 60,000 tonnes of 320-parts-per-million sulphur diesel for July 29-31 delivery. This is about 4-5 percent higher than an early-July cargo it bought from Royal Dutch Shell Plc at a premium of about $7.20 per barrel.

Diesel, which accounts for more than 40 percent of India's oil product demand, is also used for power generation and as a transport fuel in a country where car sales rose 30 percent in 2010/11.

IOC's latest diesel purchase brings its total import volume in July to 120,000 tonnes and 60,000 tonnes in June, its first imports in four months.

India's biggest refiner shut a crude unit and a fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) at a 150,000-barrel-per-day unit at its Haldia plant in June for maintenance.

It was also planning to shut a vacuum distillation unit (VDU) at its 274,000 bpd Gujarat refinery in June-July for maintenance, but details, including the duration of the planned shutdowns, are not known.

Traders said the maintenance shutdowns contributed to the spike in the company's imports.

TIGHT ASIAN SUPPLY

Tight supply in Asia amid firm demand and refinery maintenance were also factors boosting premiums for the IOC tender, said traders, adding that premiums for 10 ppm and 500 ppm sulphur diesel grades had been supported by firm demand from Australia and Saudi Arabia.

IOC's cargo for 320 ppm sulphur diesel grade, requires the blending of 10 ppm and 500 ppm grades.

"Supply is very tight now because of oil majors and Saudi Arabia snapping up all the spot cargoes," a middle distillates trader said.

BP and Shell have been actively seeking low sulphur diesel cargoes in the spot market ahead of the permanent closure of Shell's 79,000-barrel-per-day Clyde refinery in Australia on Sept. 30.

State oil giant Saudi Arabia Oil Co has been stepping up imports to meet peak summer demand in the Middle East, buying 400,000-500,000 tonnes for July, up from an estimated 350,000 tonnes in June. It is expected to book a similar amount for August.

Premiums for 10 ppm sulphur diesel loaded from Singapore rose to a seven-month high of $3.90 per barrel above Singapore quotes on Thursday, while premiums for 500 ppm sulphur rose to a near one-month high at $2.55 per barrel, Reuters data showed.

Planned maintenance at Shell's 500,000-barrel-per-day Bukom refinery in Singapore in July was also curbing supply, traders said. (Editing by Chris Lewis)

They rejected a call by the opposition Labour party for an independent judge-led investigation, along the lines of an existing wide-ranging inquiry into British media standards.

Legislators voted 330 to 226 in favour of the parliamentary inquiry, announced by the government on July 2.

Although the vote fell short of the kind of cross-party backing the government had been seeking for the plan, Labour said afterwards it would support a committee that would be set up to conduct the inquiry.

Earlier on Thursday in a parliamentary debate, chancellor George Osborne and Labour's shadow minister Ed Balls traded insults over who holds responsibility for the scandal of manipulating the interbank lending rate, Libor.

The row, which illustrates the political bitterness over Libor and the level of acrimony over the running of the economy, centred on an interview Osborne gave to The Spectator, a British political magazine.

In the interview, Osborne said people working under the previous Labour government were "clearly involved" in the scandal and that Balls, an adviser to the former labour chancellor, had "questions to answer".

Balls dismissed the allegation in parliament as "utterly false" and demanded Osborne provide evidence of his accusation or retract it and apologise.

The debate, full of shouting and interruptions, was called by Labour after a week-long dispute over who should lead an inquiry and what it should cover.

Andrew Tyrie, chairman of parliament's influential Treasury Committee and who the government wants to head the investigation, said he welcomed Labour's support after a sometimes bitter debate over the best structure for the probe.

"I will do whatever the House (of Commons) asks me to do, but I believe it is only worth trying to chair this committee if it has the full support of all the major parties," Tyrie said.

There had been doubts over whether Tyrie would agree to head the inquiry, after he said it was essential that it enjoyed cross-party backing.

Osborne said the government would seek to reach agreement with opposition parties on the details of the inquiry before parliament rises for its summer break later this month.

"I think what everyone now wants to do is get a resolution that all sides can agree on ... and we can get to the bottom of what went wrong in our banking industry and what went wrong with the Libor scandal and make the changes in legislation to make sure it never happens again," Osborne said.

Britain's Barclays bank was fined $453 million (291.8 million pounds) for its role in the rigging of the key Libor (London Inter-Bank Offered Rate) interest rate between 2005 and 2009, sparking fierce criticism about its culture and risk-taking, and forcing its chief executive Bob Diamond to step down on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Tim Castle, Additional reporting by Stephen Mangan; Editing by Michael Holden and Michael Roddy)

The results came on the same day that arch rival Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) posted record Q2 earnings, driven by soaraway sales of the Galaxy smartphone, indicating the size of the challenge facing HTC.

The Taiwanese maker is betting on its new One series of phones to regain market share lost to Samsung and Apple Inc (AAPL.O) in recent months. HTC, whose sales had grown four-fold since 2010, was battered in the second half of last year by the popularity of the iPhone and Galaxy models.

The company confirmed a news report on Friday that it has not renewed the contracts of some workers hired during the high season for its production line. The number affected is not more than 1,000, it said.

Chief Executive Peter Chou said in an interview last month that the company will launch other new models in the second half of this year.

But some analysts predict HTC will be upstaged by strong sales of the Galaxy S III and the latest iPhone, which is expected to launch in the fourth quarter, even as the whole industry faces a sales slowdown as the eurozone crisis continues to impact global consumer sentiment.

"We may not see a traditionally high season in the third quarter," said Peter Liao, an analyst at Nomura Securities. "Companies are not seeing strong pull-in and operators are feeling conservative towards giving subsidies."

Unaudited April-June net profit was T$7.4 billion($247.7 million), the company said in a statement on Friday. That was down from T$17.52 billion in the same period a year earlier but up from T$4.47 billion in January-March. It did not elaborate.

Earnings had been expected to drop to T$8.25 billion, according to a Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S survey of 21 analysts.

Second-quarter revenue was T$91 billion, improving from T$67.79 billion in the previous quarter.

Last month, HTC had cut its second-quarter revenue target by more than 13 percent to T$91 billion, and revised down its operating margin forecast by 2 percentage points to 9 percent, though it kept its gross margin target at 27 percent.

Consolidated sales for June were T$30 billion, down 33.4 percent from the same month a year earlier and unchanged from May.

HTC, valued at around $11.4 billion, had its shares closed down 5.15 percent at T$322 before the earnings release, while the broader market .TWII fell 0.26 percent.

(Reporting by Clare Jim; Editing by Ian Geoghegan and Jonathan Standing)