Northwest European gasoline refining margins fell sharply on Thursday, pressured by rising crude prices and a rise in regional stocks. Brent prices jumped more than 4% on Thursday after a suspected attack on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman near Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil consumption passes.
Taiwan's state oil refiner CPC said the Front Altair, owned by Norway's Frontline, was "suspected of being hit by a torpedo" around 0400 GMT carrying a Taiwan-bound cargo of 75,000 tonnes of petrochemical feedstock naphtha, which Refinitiv Eikon data showed had been picked up from Ruwais in the UAE. Total oil product stocks in independent storage in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub jumped by around 8.5% in the week to Thursday to 6.35 million tonnes, data from Dutch consultancy Insights Global showed.
Gasoline stocks rose by 13.1% to a four-month high of 1.22 million tonnes, driven largely by lower exports, Insight Global's Lars van Wageningen said. Industry monitor Genscape said a 70,000 barrel per day crude unit at ExxonMobil's Fawley refinery was down. A spokesman for the oil major did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment.
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