Asia's naphtha crack to Brent crude slipped on Friday marking four straight sessions of declines this week. Concerns of ample supplies continued to weigh on market sentiment despite slightly improved buying interest from North Asian buyers on Friday, trade sources said. The naphtha crack to Brent crude slipped to a seven-session low of $20.65 a tonne on Friday, down from $25.03 a tonne in the previous session, its lowest since November 14.
Asia's gasoline crack also narrowed its premium to Brent crude on Friday, weighed down by excess supplies and /sluggish demand. The Singapore 92 RON gasoline crack against Brent crude slipped to a weekly low of $0.32 a barrel, down from $0.87 a barrel on Thursday and down from a near-three week high of $1.64 on Wednesday.
Gasoline inventories held independently at the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub rose to a three-week high of 970,000 tonnes in the week to November 22, data from Dutch consultancy PJK International showed. Gasoline stocks rose 7.9 pct in the absence of exports to the United States or Latin America, PJK's Lars van Wageningen said. By contrast, ARA naphtha inventories fell for a second straight week to a one-year low of 202,000 tonnes in the week to Thursday as cargoes of naphtha left the ARA hub for Asia Pacific and the Mediterranean, the data showed.
In Singapore, inventories of light distillates climbed to a three-month high of 13.444 million barrels in the week to November 21, official data showed on Thursday. In the US, weekly gasoline stocks were down 1.3 million barrels at 225.32 million barrels in the week to November 16, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.