Gasoline refining margins in northwest Europe extended their gains on Thursday on the back of a outage on a gasoline unit at a Welsh refinery. Valero Energy was buying gasoline cargoes for spot delivery in the US East Coast after an outage on the 90,000 barrels per day (bpd) FCC at its Pembroke refinery in Wales earlier this week, trade sources said on Thursday. Valero typically sells gasoline barrels from their Pembroke refinery into the New York Harbor market. Lower Atlantic basin stocks also boosted margins.
US gasoline stocks fell last week by 4.0 million barrels, compared with analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 1.5 million-barrel drop, the EIA said. The draw was particularly strong in the East Coast region, known as PADD 1, where stocks fell by 2.89 million barrels. Traders were expecting another wave of gasoline exports from Europe to the Middle East in the coming weeks due to a busy maintenance season in the region.
No trades of Eurobob gasoline barges emerged in the afternoon trading window. Bids emerged at $615 a tonne fob ARA, up from $595 and $598 a tonne the previous day. Earlier in the day 17,000 tonnes traded at $608-$620 a tonne fob Amsterdam-Rotterdam, up from $607 a tonne in the previous session. Shell, Total, and BP sold to Gunvor and Varo. Gunvor sold to Total two barges of premium unleaded gasoline at $618 a tonne fob ARA, up from $612 a tonne fob ARA.
The December swap stood at $577 a tonne at the close, up from $575.50 a tonne. The benchmark EBOB gasoline refining margin rose to $11.99 a barrel from $10.83 a barrel on Wednesday. Brent crude futures were flat at $60.49 a barrel at 1649 GMT.