Asia Distillates-Gasoil holds but China supply may hurt sellers

SINGAPORE: Asia's gasoil crack edged down by 5 cents to $12.35 a barrel on Friday after the value shot to more than a six-month high in the previous session, boosted by trims in refinery runs due to maintenance at secondary units in South Korea and Taiwan.

Some 1.9 million tonnes of diesel from Asia and the Middle East were seen sailing to Europe in June, giving Asian sellers an outlet outside the East.

But eyes remained on China which has the ability to hit the market with hefty export volumes which have reached new highs twice this year.

Its May diesel exports were at nearly 1.5 million tonnes, up 19 percent or about 234,000 tonnes from April.

However, the impact was mitigated by lower exports from India, where diesel shipments in May at 1.44 million tonnes were down 680,000 tonnes, or 32 percent, from April.

But China's slower economy could hurt domestic sales, JBC Energy said in a daily note and that could result in a 50,000 barrel per day (bpd) demand loss.

Gasoil deals in the Singapore cash market came to a standstill after high volumes of a total of 1.8 million barrels of the fuel were transacted between June 28 and 29.

But a jet fuel cash deal was done for the first time this week in Singapore.

Hin Leong sold 110,000 barrels of jet fuel for July 18-22 loading at a discount of 20 cents a barrel.