Asia's naphtha falls; gasoline hits three-month low

Asia's naphtha crack fell to a 12-week low of $14.43 a tonne on Wednesday while gasoline tumbled to below $1 a barrel, the lowest since February 25, dragged down by ample light distillates supplies. Naphtha arriving next month from the West including Europe and the Mediterranean are expected to be lower than May's volumes estimated at some 1.6 million tonnes as the market is currently awash with cargoes.
But the lower volumes would do little to turn the market around as recent demand had been slower-than-expected due to a string of reasons including scheduled cracker maintenance, an outage in Japan in late April and an extended shutdown of Hanwha Total's 1 million tonnes per year Daesan cracker. Cheaper alternative feedstock liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) has also affected naphtha demand.