Gasoline refining margins in north-west Europe rose slightly on Friday amid a broad sell-off in oil futures on the back of concerns over heavy supplies and weak demand in the United States. Several tankers were booked out of Europe to go to the US East Coast in recent days, according to shipping data, probably to deliver cargoes sold in previous weeks when the arbitrage was open, traders said.
Barge activity in the ARA region remained relatively strong but cargo trading was limited, traders said. A tanker of gasoline en route to New York Harbour from Europe has been diverted to a Caribbean storage hub because a narrow window of opportunity for shipping profitably to the US East Coast appears to have shut, traders said.
The Long-Range 2 (LR2) vessel Amorea, floating offshore the New York Harbour carrying summer-grade RBOB gasoline, known as F2-grade, set sail to New York but was diverted to the BORCO storage hub in the Caribbean, according to Reuters vessel tracking data and three sources with knowledge of the matter.
ARA gasoline stock rose by 5.77 percent in the week to Thursday to 1.17 million tonnes after a large vessel previously used for floating storage discharged its cargo into onshore tanks, PJK International said. Shell Oil Co, the US arm of Royal Dutch Shell, on Thursday reaffirmed the target date to split up the Motiva Enterprises refining joint venture with co-owner Saudi Aramco would be May 1.
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