Asia's naphtha crack stayed at a five-month low for the second day on Thursday at $49.65 a tonne while gasoline crack hit a one-month low of $4.02 a barrel, weighed down by concerns of slower economic growth because of the coronavirus.
Spot naphtha deals this week however were brisk with many buyers seen although several petrochemical producers in Asia have reduced throughput since December/January. South Korea's YNCC on Thursday bought the light fuel at a premium of about $13 a tonne to Japan quotes on a cost-and-freight (C&F) basis.
This was higher than the $10.25 a tonne premium YNCC had paId a week ago when the premium was at a five-month low of $10.
Taiwan's Formosa Petrochemical Corp had a day earlier bought around 100,000 tonnes of open-specification naphtha on at premiums of about $12 to $13 a tonne to its own price formula on cost-and-freight (C&F) basis. This was the lowest it has paid in five months, Reuters data showed.
Apart from Formosa on Wednesday, other buyers included Malaysia-based Titan, its parent company South Korean Lotte Chemical, Taiwan's CPC, China's CNOOC and Thailand's SCG. Singapore's onshore light distillates stocks, which comprise mostly gasoline and blending components for gasoline, fell by nearly 4.9% or 655,000 barrels in the week to Wednesday to a 7-week low of 12.8 million barrels.
US gasoline stocks fell 2.7 million barrels in the week to Feb. 21 to 256.4 million barrels, the Energy Information Administration EIA said, compared with expectations in a Reuters poll for a 2.2 million-barrel drop. Hengyuan Refining Company offered 12,000 tonnes of catalytic cracked gasoline for March 22-28 loading from Port Dickson, Malaysia, through a tender closing on February 28.
It had previously sold two February cargoes of catalytic cracked gasoline at a discount of $1.50 a barrel to Singapore quotes on a free-on-board (FOB) basis.
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