Asia's naphtha crack recovered to reach a two-session high of $77.80 a tonne on Thursday, with traders expecting Europe to ship fewer cargoes for September arrival in Asia compared with July and August. Asia is expected to receive about 1.3 million tonnes of naphtha from the West including Europe, Mediterranean this month. This was 18 percent above the monthly average for 2016.
The recent high supplies have weighed heavily on prices and prevented most of the cargoes from the West from coming to Asia in September. Reliance offered 55,000 tonnes of naphtha for September 3-6 loading from Sikka but results were not immediately clear. Japan's Mitsui Chemicals has restarted its 612,000 tonnes per year naphtha cracker in Ichihara, Chiba prefecture, on Wednesday as planned after the completion of scheduled maintenance which started on June 20.
Taiwan's Formosa however will be shutting the largest of three crackers for maintenance this month. Singapore's onshore light distillates stocks, which comprise mostly gasoline and blending components for petrol, dived 10.4 percent or nearly 1.5 million barrels to reach a two-week low of 12.815 million barrels in the week to August 2, official data showed.
Shipment of nearly 203,000 tonnes marked the highest volume Singapore had sent to Indonesia in four weeks, the data showed. The data also showed that 55,000 tonnes of gasoline was shipped to Iran compared 38,251 tonnes shipped to Singapore from Iran in the week to July 19. Consulting firm FGE had previously said in a note that Iran's gasoline demand in July was at an all-time high due to growing fleet of vehicles. US gasoline stocks fell by 2.5 million barrels in the week to July 28, compared with analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 636,000-barrel drop.
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