NEW DELHI: Asia’s gasoline margin rose on Thursday after Singapore light distillates inventories declined, boosting demand sentiment.

The gasoline crack rose to $11.14 a barrel, up 50 cents from the last close.

Singapore’s onshore inventory of light distillates fell 517,000 barrels to 11.505 million barrels in the week to Dec. 29, according to data released on Thursday by Enterprise Singapore.

Meanwhile, China has issued its first refined fuel import quotas for 2022, with gasoline and diesel volumes sharply up from a year ago, and naphtha, a petrochemicals feedstock, largely steady, according to industry sources.

The naphtha crack in the region climbed to $159.58 per tonne from $153.50 and the inter-month spread between first-half February and March narrowed by $1.

Naphtha margins registered a fall of over 6% last week over demand worries. Oil prices eased on Thursday after the world’s top importer China cut the first batch of crude import allocations for 2022, offsetting the impact of US data showing fuel demand had held up despite soaring Omicron coronavirus infections.