Asia's naphtha crack recovered 13% on Thursday following a 37% plunge in the previous session and gasoline margins hit a one-week high, as refinery run cuts and refinery maintenance provided support.
Naphtha crack rebounded from a five-month low to a two session high of $45.70 a tonne, while gasoline margins were a one-week high of $5.51 a barrel.
South Korea's top refiner SK Energy has cut refinery runs by 10% to 15% this month at its 840,000 barrels per day (bpd) Ulsan refinery to combat weak demand.
This comes at a time when Taiwan's Formosa and Hyundai Oilbank have scheduled maintenance at their refineries in March and April, respectively.
Singapore's oil products inventories in the week to March 4 hit a two-and-a-half year high of over 52 million barrels, official data showed on Thursday, of which more than 25% of it were made up light distillates with the remaining comprising middle distillates and fuel oil. The light distillates stocks, made up mostly of gasoline and gasoline blending components, surged 10.8% or 1.39 million barrels to reach a 10-month high of 14.2 million barrels.
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