Asia's gasoline rises on tight supplies

Asia's gasoline crack rose for the fourth straight session on Tuesday to hover near a three-month high of $9.35 a barrel, as heavy refinery run cuts in China drove the value higher.

As China is the top supplier of petrol to Asia, the amount of cargoes it can export in a month will impact the market. However, it was not yet clear what would be its total February shipments.

In December, China exported some 1.73 million tonnes of gasoline.

China's January exports were seen at least 400,000 tonnes lower than December.

Strong demand for petrol from India was also lending support to the market as refiners in the country had been upgrading their refineries since last year to produce fuels that are of Bharat VI standard.

South Korea's Hyundai Oilbank plans to shut its 360,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) No.2 crude distillation unit and 86,000-bpd fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) for a 40-day maintenance starting in April.

Asia's naphtha crack rose to a near one-month high of $94.88 a tonnes due to squeezed supply caused by refinery maintenance in the Middle East, Asia's top supplier.

Middle East naphtha exports for February assessed at 2.1-2.2. million tonnes are down from January's estimates at 2.5-2.6 million tonnes, data from Refinitiv showed.

Lower Middle Eastern supplies currently have overshadowed a weak petrochemicals market as China grapples with a health crisis cause by the fast-spreading coronavirus.

The virus outbreak could trim China's full-year economic growth rate by as much as 1 percentage point in 2020, said the Chinese government think tank the National Institute for Finance and Development.