European gasoline margins fall as US stocks jump

Northwest European gasoline refining margins fell sharply on Thursday as Atlantic Basin inventories grew, cutting into arbitrage economics out of Europe. US gasoline stocks rose by 6 million barrels last week, compared with analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 2.0 million-barrel gain, according to the Energy Information Administration.
US gasoline margins fell to their lowest level since December 14 following the release of the data. Gasoline stocks in independently held storage in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) hub rose by 6.2 percent in the week to Thursday, according to Dutch consultancy PJK International.
But European gasoline is likely to find support from a prolonged shutdown at ADNOC's 800,000 bpd Ruwais refinery in the United Arab Emirates. A gasoline-making residual fluid catalytic cracker (RFCC) unit remains offline at the 800,000 bpd refinery, a company spokesman said.
It could take ADNOC two to three months to restart the refinery's RFCC after a fire on a petrochemical unit last week, three industry sources said. A crude distillation unit at the plant was restarted on Thursday, the spokesman said. Israeli refinery ORL shut down the continuous catalytic reformer (CCR) unit at its 170,000 barrel per day (bpd) Haifa, Israel, oil refinery for planned maintenance work, sources told Reuters on Thursday.
The unit will be closed for more than a month, and will cut oil product exports from the refinery until the end of February. No barges of benchmark European gasoline traded during the afternoon windo Elsewhere during the day, Gunvor sold a barge each to Varo and Finco at $529 a tonne fob Amsterdam-Rotterdam, down from $540 and $549 a tonne the previous session.
No trades of premium unleaded gasoline emerged. A bid surfaced at $547 a tonne fob ARA, compared with a trade the previous day at $560 a tonne. The February swap stood at around $532 a tonne at the close, down from $543 a tonne on Wednesday. Gasoline barge refining margins fell to $10.09 a barrel, from $11.37 a barrel on Wednesday. US front month RBOB gasoline futures were down 0.65 percent at $1.5387 by 1641 GMT.