Asia's 2019 naphtha, gasoline cracks end at multi-year low

Asia's naphtha crack on Tuesday ended the year at a two-session high of $89.75 a tonne.

This brought the average for 2019 to $49 a tonne, lowest since Reuters started tracking the data in April 2008.

If not for the attacks on Saudi oilfields in September which had severely tightened supplies, Asia's naphtha average crack value could have been worse off this year due to ample cargoes and heavy naphtha cracker maintenance as well as outages which had choked off demand, industry sources said.

At present, naphtha supplies are still comparatively tight although not at the same intensity when Aramco was snapping up cargoes to plug its supply gap immediately after the attacks.

India's BPCL sold 35,000 tonnes of naphtha on late Monday for Jan. 7-8 loading to a European trader at premiums of about $35 a tonne to its own price formula on a free-on-board (FOB) basis.

This was down by at least 18% compared to a cargo the refiner had sold for Dec. 27-28 loading from the same port, but nearly 7 times more versus the average premium it had received for two September cargoes.

There are fewer naphtha crackers going into planned maintenance in 2020 versus 2019.

Similarly, gasoline ended on a weak note with the year's average at $5.32 a barrel being the lowest since Reuters tracked the value in April 2008.

Supplies of gasoline keep growing due to new capacities especially in China.

This has prompted China to raise the volumes of its first batch of 2020 fuel export quotas by 53% from a year earlier to 27.99 million tonnes, according to a document from the Ministry of Commerce that was reviewed by Reuters on Tuesday.

Zhejiang Petroleum & Chemical Co Ltd, one of two new 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) major refineries built in China in 2019, said on Tuesday it has started up the remaining units in the first phase of its refinery and petrochemical complex.

The other 400,000 bpd refinery is owned by Hengli Petrochemical.

Malaysia has also started gasoline exports from its new refinery, having sold at least 60,000 tonnes for November and December loading from Pengerang.