Asia's naphtha physical crack for the second half of September hit a three-week low of $99.55 a tonne on Friday as upcoming crackers' maintenance in South Korea and muted spot deals weighed, traders said. Crackers in Asia mainly rely on naphtha as their feedstock and maintenance at these units would choke off some demand.
Lotte Chem, LG Chem and YNCC have scheduled maintenance taking place in either September or the fourth quarter. The weaker fundamentals were reflected in spot deals this week. Malaysia-based Titan on Wednesday bought naphtha for second-half September arrival at Pasir Gudang at a low-single digit premium a tonne to Japan quotes on a cost-and-freight (C&F) basis.
This was down from the mid-to-high single digit premium a tonne it paid on July 25. Asia's gasoline extended gains for the fourth straight session to reach a fresh 2-1/2 month high of $8.69 a barrel, with some recent support coming from Mexico although supplies were still ample in most major hubs. Gasoline stocks held independently at the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub rose by 5 percent in the week to Thursday to reach a three-week high of 1.021 million tonnes, data from Dutch consultancy PJK International showed.
That was nearly 14 percent higher than a year ago, the data showed. US gasoline stocks rose last week by 2.9 million barrels, data from the Energy Information Administration showed, contrasting with analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 1.7 million barrels drop.
Mexico's largest refinery Pemex's Salina Cruz refinery has shut since Wednesday due to a power outage and was scheduled to restart operations this week. Mexico has been buying gasoline from as far as SSingapore on a sporadic basis Close to 71,000 tonnes of gasoline of different grades were shipped to Mexico from Singapore between August 2 and 7, official data showed.
A huge oil refinery of 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) being built in Nigeria by Africa's richest man is unlikely to start production until 2022, two years later than the target date, sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. China's automobile sales fell 4 percent in July from a year earlier to 1.89 million vehicles, an industry association said on Friday, as US carmakers lost market share amid rising concern over the potential fallout of a Sino-US trade spat.
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