Asia's naphtha crack recovered from a three-session low the previous day to a two-session high of $118.70 a tonne on Thursday, lifted by strong fundamentals. Although spot purchases ebbed this week, overall demand has soaked up a lot of the supplies.
Spot premiums paid this week for naphtha scheduled for delivery to South Korea in the first half of February, at more than $11 a tonne to Japan quotes cost and freight (C&F), reflected tight supplies. About a year ago cargoes scheduled for the corresponding period were at discount levels.
Separately, China's Unipec this week bought a 30,000-tonne cargo for delivery in the second half of January and another 30,000 tonnes for the first half of February at premiums in the low $20s a tonne to Japan quotes C&F. India's Reliance offered 55,000 tonnes of naphtha for loading Jan. 23-26 from Sikka through a tender closing Dec. 28.
Asia's gasoline crack recovered 1.6 percent to $7.76 a barrel after falling to a 9-1/2 month low the previous day. China has raised refined products export quotas to its four state oil majors by 30 percent in the first batch of allowances for 2018. Of the total 16.24 million tonnes of oil products, 40.5 percent is gasoline.
China has been exporting high volumes of gasoline, with November exports at 1.042 million tonnes, only 5.3 percent lower than the record volume in June 2016. China's November exports were still lower than India's 1.14 million tonnes for the same month.
Singapore's onshore light distillates stocks fell 6 percent, or 831,000 barrels, to a four-week low of 13 million barrels, official data showed. Close to 22,000 tonnes of gasoline were shipped to Singapore from the UK while about 37,000 tonnes were shipped from Singapore to Mexico, the data showed.
Japan's gasoline sales for November, at about 893,000 barrels per day (bpd), were up 31,464 bpd from October, official data showed. However, Japan's November gasoline sales were lower than in the same period last year. Japan's JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy Corp plans to shut the 120,000 bpd sole crude distillation unit (CDU) at Marifu refinery from late January to early March for scheduled maintenance.
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