Asia's gasoline crack eased 1 cent on Tuesday to $12.79 a barrel but remained close to its highest in two weeks. The dip was dismissed by traders, who said that global demand for the fuel has mostly been firm this year. Nigeria, which is almost entirely reliant on imports for its daily consumption of some 40 million litres of gasoline, has issued additional import allocations for at least 300,000 tonnes of gasoline for the remainder of the third quarter. And the country will keep fuel subsidies for another quarter.
A rise of nearly 10 percent in China's crude imports in the first eight months of this year to 6.63 million barrels per day is mostly driven by gasoline and kerosene. While the Singapore physical cash gasoline deals were thin, with only one trade done, paper trades were unusually high. About 31 paper deals were done in the single session, with dominant seller being PTT, which also sold a 92-octane grade gasoline physical cargo for October 4-8 loading to Phillips 66 at $60.80 a barrel. The reasons behind PTT's selling spree were not clear. PTT's gasoline team, comprising ex-Glencore traders, has been active in the Singapore physical cash market.