Asia's naphtha crack dived 17 percent to hit a 3-1/2 month low of $58.83 a tonne on ample supplies, traders said on Thursday. They added that high refinery runs in Asia have countered lower volumes of Western cargoes arriving in Asia this month and in May. "There are a lot of cargoes in the market. Sellers are concerned about second-half June too," said a trader. The weak fundamentals pushed prices down further.
Taiwanese Formosa Petrochemical Corp, Asia's top naphtha importer, has bought open-specification naphtha for first-half June delivery to Mailiao at a discount of $4 to $5 a tonne. The volumes bought were not immediately clear but the current discounts were wider than the $2 to $3 a tonne Formosa had paid on April 13 for about 150,000 tonnes scheduled for second-half May delivery.
South Korea's YNCC on the other hand bought 75,000 tonnes of naphtha, also for first-half June delivery, but to Yeosu at about $3.25 a tonne below Japan quotes on a cost-and-freight (C&F) basis, making this the steepest discount seen in a month. South Korea's biggest chemical company LG Chem said on Thursday it had sought help from authorities retrieving $21 million that it believed had been paid into a fake bank account to purchase a refined oil product.
GASOLINE EASES Asia's gasoline crack eased from a two-week high to a three-session low of $8.51 a barrel but cash deals remained healthy as Unipec continued to snap up more cargoes. The Chinese trader has bought around 1.5 million barrels of gasoline from the Singapore cash market since April 1.