Asia's naphtha crack rose to $58.23 a tonne on Thursday, recovering the previous day's decline to reach its highest since September 29, supported by reduced supplies. South Korea's Lotte Chemical has bought four naphtha cargoes averaging 25,000 tonnes each for first-half December delivery to Daesan and Yeosu at discounts of about $4.50 to $5 a tonne to Japan quotes cost and freight (C&F).
The discounts were narrower than those Lotte paid on October 13 and were also the narrowest since September 28 for cargoes delivering to South Korea. The purchases came a day after GS Caltex bought a total of four cargoes for first-half December delivery at premiums around $2.50 a tonne to Japan quotes C&F because they were heavier grades, traders said.
Japan's top refiner, JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp, shut the 63,500 barrels per day (bpd) condensate splitter and 21,200 bpd No 3 reformer at its Kashima refinery in eastern Japan on Thursday after a fire at the reformer, the company said. Typically, naphtha accounts for more than 50 percent of the oil products from a condensate splitter. A reformer is a gasoline-making unit. Asia's gasoline crack rose for the fifth straight session to hover around a three-week high of $8.98 a barrel on supply cuts caused by refinery maintenance. Although Singapore's onshore light distillates were up, levels were 17 percent below the record high of 15.5 million barrels in early March.