Asia's naphtha price for front-month first-half March over first-half April rose for the fourth straight session on Friday to reach $3.50 a tonne, the highest premium between two months in 5-1/2 months as prompt supplies tightened. The bulls kept their focus on supplies being squeezed in first-half February following delays to cargoes from Europe due to previous port disruptions in Russia.
Recent steady demand from Taiwan and South Korea has also given the market a boost. The stronger fundamentals lifted India's Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd's sales premiums. The refiner sold 35,000 tonnes of naphtha for February 12-14 loading from Mumbai to Petro-Diamond at a premium in the high single-digit price level to Middle East quotes on a free-on-board (FOB) basis. BPCL had previously sold a cargo for January 22-22 loading out of Mumbai to Itochu at a discount. In China, naphtha imports for 2014 hit a record high of nearly 3.7 million tonnes, official data showed. While South Korea remained the top exporter of naphtha to China, the data showed that exports from Russia, Saudi Arabia, India and the United States had all rose from 2013.
Although China's overall naphtha imports were small compared to monthly imports from South Korea at an average of 1.4 million tonnes, the increased demand from China would help lift market sentiment, traders said. As for gasoline, China exported nearly 5 million tonnes of the motor fuel in 2014, the highest since 2010, the data showed.
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