Asia's naphtha crack recovered to a two-session high of $100.25 a tonne on Thursday, snapping three straight sessions of losses as raw material Brent crude prices weakened even as light fuel demand remained firm. At least three buyers, including Taiwan's Formosa Petrochemical, Chinese Unipec and South Korea's LG Chem, started seeking naphtha for first-half December delivery.
Another Chinese buyer, CNOOC, was also looking for naphtha but for November 23 to December 9 delivery to Huizhou through a tender closing on October 23. Reliance Industries has sold a cargo for mid-November loading to Glencore, close to levels in the low-teens a tonne to Middle East quotes on a free-on-board (FOB) basis, traders said.
Reliance had recently sold two naphtha cargoes totalling 55,000 tonnes for November 8-10 loading from Sikka to Vitol at premiums of about $15 a tonne to Middle East quotes on a FOB basis. Oil and Natural Gas Corp has sold a 17,500-tonne cargo of naphtha for late October loading from Mumbai to Vitol, but the results were not immediately clear. Russian Rosneft has offered up to a total of 2 million tonnes of naphtha for 2018 loading from Vostochnyi and Nakhodka through two separate tenders which would stay valid until December 5. Up to 1.2 million tonnes would be from Vostochnyi and the remaining from Nakhodka.
CNOOC was looking to sell up to 39,000 tonnes of 92-octane gasoline for November 21-22 loading from Dongguan, Guangdong, through a tender closing on October 20. Kenya's oil importers are seeking a total of nearly 449,000 tonnes of oil products for delivery between mid-December and early January, of which 140,492 tonnes would be gasoline.
Singapore's light distillates stocks, comprising mostly gasoline and blendstock for petrol, slipped 3.4 percent to reach a three-week low of 11.6 million barrels in the week to October 18, official data showed. The latest weekly level was 9.5 percent lower than a year ago. The fall in inventories contrasted with higher stocks in the United States, which had risen by 908,000 barrels last week versus analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 256,000 barrels gain.