The Asian gasoline crack fell to a one-month low of $7.56 a barrel on Monday, dragged down by ample supplies. An explosion at a sulphur recovery unit in the 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) Sinopec Yangzi plant failed to lift the market as traders were not expecting any immediate impact from the outage. Gasoline supplies in Asia are also expected to gradually increase as peak refinery maintenance in North Asia is almost over.
Taiwan's Formosa Petrochemical Corp, for instance, has resumed spot sales for second-half July loading from Mailiao after a four-month absence even though it will lower its average June refinery run rates by about 2 percentage points compared with May, to about 370,000 bpd. Formosa operates a 540,000 bpd plant in Mailiao. South Korea's state-run oil firm Korea National Oil Corp (KNOC) is seeking 1.2 million barrels of gasoline for a 12-month contract starting July while the National Agricultural Co-operative Federation is seeking refiners to supply a combined 6.29 million barrels a year of gasoline, diesel and kerosene for the same period. The tenders will close on June 20 but will be finalised in late June for a one-year supply, starting from July, KNOC said in a statement.
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