Asia's naphtha crack was near a two-month high of $100.18 a tonne on Friday, supported by strong demand for the feedstock from petrochemical makers. Asia's gasoline crack hit a five-week high of $6.29 a barrel but the value still paled versus $10.95 in 2017 but sharply higher than 2016 at $1.83 for the same period.
South Korean S-Oil was looking to buy gasoline in a rare move to plug a supply gap as a new unit has not yet reached optimum throughput. Once successfully commissioned, S-Oil is seen exporting the new supplies from the gasoline-making unit which is able to produce 21,000 barrels per day (bpd) of petrol. Kuwait Petroleum Corp sold on Wednesday to oil major Shell 50,000 tonnes for August 22-23 loading and another 25,000 tonnes for August 24-25 loading at premiums of $21 to $22 a tonne to Middle East quotes on a free-on-board (FOB) basis.
This could not be directly confirmed as buyers and sellers do not typically comment on their deals. Gasoline stocks held independently at the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub rose by over 10 percent in the week to Thursday to reach a five-week high of 1.08 million tonnes, data from Dutch consultancy PJK International showed. This mirrored the trend in Singapore but contrasted the drop in US gasoline inventories.
Comments
Comments are closed.