Asia's naphtha physical crack for second-half September at $116.95 a tonne on Wednesday was the lowest front-month value in a week as spot purchases were mostly muted for now. Asia's gasoline crack also fell and was at a 1-1/2 week low of $7.36 a barrel. Vitol bought Indian Oil Corp's naphtha cargo of up to 15,000 tonnes for August 10-12 loading from Haldia at discounts of about $17 a tonne to the refiner's own price formula on a free-on-board (FOB) basis.
Vitol was also poised to win a sales tender by Sri Lanka for 120,000 barrels of naphtha scheduled for end-August loading from Colombo as it gave the highest bid at a discount of about $4.80 a barrel to Singapore quotes on a FOB basis versus the lowest bid at a discount of close to $7 a barrel.
India's Bharat Petrochemical Corp Ltd (BPCL) which has recently withdrawn selling up to 40,000 tonnes of naphtha for August 10-11 loading from Kochi, returned with a tender to sell a total of up to 85,000 tonnes of naphtha for second-half August loading from Kochi and Mumbai.
Japan's gasoline stocks fell 320,000 barrels to 9.32 million barrels in the week to July 28, official data showed, despite slightly higher refinery run rates averaging 88.8 percent compared to 88.3 percent in the previous week.
Japan's Fuji Oil Co. has started using a new platforming catalyst supplied by Honeywell UOP to produce more aromatics at its Sodegaura Refinery in Chiba, Honeywell said this week in a statement.