Asia's naphtha crack rose for the fourth straight session on Wednesday to $78.40 a tonne, the highest since April 13, as recent demand for June cargoes gave the market support. Asia's gasoline crack, in contrast, fell to $6.27 a barrel, erasing gains from the previous three sessions and was now at its lowest since April 20.
China is now expected to issue fuel export quotas for the rest of this year in one allocation round rather than in batches. It will be keeping the total allowances for 2018 unchanged from last year's level at 43 million tonnes. Pakistan State Oil (PSO) was seen buying a total of 93,000 tonne of gasoline comprising 92-octane and 97-octane grade for first-half June arrival at Karachi at premiums of nearly $1.20 to $1.60 a barrel from Oman Trading and Emirates National Oil Co (ENOC).
Separately, Attock Refinery Ltd (ARL) sold 21,000 tonnes of naphtha for April 27-29 loading from Karachi to Trafigura at a discount of 45 cents to Singapore quotes on a free-on-board (FOB) basis. ARL also sold 23,000 tonnes of naphtha for April 9-11 loading from Karachi to Vitol at a premium of $9.50 but to Middle East quotes on an FOB basis.
Vitol also bought from Pakistan Refinery Ltd (PRL) 10,000 tonnes of naphtah for the same loading dates of April 9-11 at a discount of 30 cents to Singapore quotes on an FOB basis. Light distillates stocks held in Fujairah rose for the second week to 8.224 million barrels in the week to April 23, making this the highest level since February 26, data from S&P Global Platts showed.
Analysts forecast that stockpiles of gasoline in the US fell about 600,000 barrels last week, an expanded Reuters poll showed. S-Oil Corp, South Korea's third-biggest oil refiner expects strong demand growth to bolster second-quarter refining margins after earlier-than-usual regular refinery maintenance outages squeezed January-March profit below market estimates.
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