Asia's naphtha crack rose for a third straight session on Tuesday to a near two-week high of $74.13 a tonne, but was 39 percent below the fourth-quarter average on sufficient supplies. Naphtha demand continued to emerge from North Asia, but traders said fundamentals had not changed from last week.
Taiwan's Formosa Petrochemical Corp, which has been replacing a partial amount of naphtha with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) at its crackers, was out to buy naphtha for first-half April delivery to Mailiao. Offer levels were not immediately known.
South Korea's Hanwha Total bought at least 50,000 tonnes of heavy full-range naphtha at premiums of about $7 a tonne to Japan quotes on a cost-and-freight (C&F) basis for first-half April arrival at Daesan. This was stable-to-firm compared with the $6 to $7 a tonne premium Hanwha paid on February 20, also for cargoes to be delivered in first-half April.
South Korea's YNCC will restart one of its three naphtha crackers around March 5 after 10-day maintenance. YNCC also has a scheduled turn around for a 465,000-tpy cracker in October.
Asia's gasoline crack was at a five-session high of $7.85 a barrel. Gasoline stockpiles in the United States were forecast to have fallen by 600,000 barrels last week, a preliminary Reuters poll showed on Monday. US gasoline inventories in the week to February 16 were up by 261,000 barrels.
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