The Asian gasoil margin slipped from an 11-month high on Wednesday but remained supported due to spot demand from Vietnam and Sri Lanka, trade sources said. The gasoil margin fell to $13.01 a barrel above Dubai crude from $13.92 a barrel the previous day which was the highest since November 30, last year, Reuters data showed. Vietnam's largest oil importer Petrolimex and Sri Lanka's Ceylon Petroleum Corp were seeking gasoil cargoes for December, they said.
Vietnam's sole 130,500 barrels-per-day Dung Quat refinery is running normally after an incident on a pipeline last week, the chief executive of the plant's operating company told Reuters. Last Thursday, there was an incident involving a broken weld on a pipeline which discharges gas at the refinery's residue fluid catalytic cracking (RFCC) workshop, said Tran Ngoc Nguyen, chief executive officer of state-owned Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical Co which runs the refinery.
But this has since been fixed as part of regular maintenance work and did not affect the normal operation of the refinery, he told Reuters. The refinery is currently running at 107 percent of capacity, he said. Kenya's oil importers bought more than 350,000 tonnes of oil products, scheduled for December to early January delivery, which helped boost margins in Asia, trade sources said. Importers purchased 183,863 tonnes of gasoline, 72,654 tonnes of gasoil and 98,175 tonnes of jet fuel from Total Kenya, Vivo Energy, Galana Oil, Kencor and KenolKobil, they said. The arbitrage to send gasoil cargoes west could improve should European diesel prices go up, which could in turn support Asian prices, traders said. But this is dependent on a cold winter in Europe, they added.