Asia's naphtha crack eased 1.8 percent on Tuesday and hit a three-session low of $107.38 a tonne, after marking their highest since Aug. 6 in the previous session, as oil prices at a four-year peak weighed on the market. South Korea's LG Chem emerged to buy naphtha for November arrival and paid around $2 a tonne premium to Japan quotes on a cost-and-freight (C&F) basis, but pegged to a 45-day formula instead of the usual 30-day, traders said.
This, however, could not be directly confirmed as buyers do not typically comment on their deals. Naphtha fundamentals had been stronger since last week.
This was because cargoes arriving next month from the West, including Europe and the Mediterranean, were still seen at lower levels versus cargoes landing this month. Japan's JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy Corp restarted its 540,000-tonnes-per-year Kawasaki cracker in late September after a scheduled maintenance that started on August 11.
Global commodity trader Vitol has hired Roy Kim as its naphtha trader at its Singapore office. Ivy Tan, who left Vitol in the first half of this year, has since joined JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy Corp.
Meanwhile, an ex-Singapore-based managing director for commodity merchant Gunvor Group, Dikun Yin, was given a 12-year prison sentence in China for his role in evading Chinese tariffs on oil imports.
Asia's gasoline crack was at a two-session low of $7.70 a barrel.
There were 11 gasoline cash deals, making this the highest number of trades in a single session in the Singapore cash market since September 4.
Vitol scooped up 10 of the cargoes for October-loading at prices of $92.60 to $92.70 a barrel.
This brought its total purchase in two days to 17 cargoes, or 850,000 barrels, versus around 19 cargoes it sold for October-loading in the entire September.
The most recent buying spree seen in the cash market was by ENOC when it bought a total of some 1.15 million barrels of gasoline in three days from September 3-5. In the United States, gasoline stockpiles were forecast to have risen 1.2 million barrels last week, a preliminary Reuters poll showed.
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