Asia's gasoline crack slumped to a two-month low of $4.52 a barrel on Tuesday, while naphtha had a smaller fall and reached a two-session low of $45.90 a tonne on adequate supplies. Naphtha arriving in Asia this month from the Middle East and the West, including Europe, the Mediterranean and the United States, hit up to 5.5 million tonnes versus 4.9 million tonnes in April due to more cargoes from the former, a weekly report by Refinitiv Oil Research showed.
Spot trades were mostly muted following a deal on Monday in South Korea where SK Energy bought heavy full-range grade naphtha for second-half June delivery to Ulsan at premiums of more than $5 a tonne to Japan quotes on a cost-and-freight (C&F) basis, industry sources said.
The deal came after Hanwha Total had on Friday picked up similar grades, also for second-half June delivery, at premiums of $6 to $7 a tonne.
India's Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) sold 35,000 tonnes of naphtha to Shell for May 11-13 loading from Mumbai at a premium of about $8 a tonne to its own price formula on a free-on-board (FOB) basis, industry sources said.
The refiner, however, cancelled a sales tender for 20,000 tonnes of naphtha scheduled for May 25-26 loading from Kochi and reissued a tender for a larger cargo of 30,000 tonnes instead for the same loading period from the same port.
Gasoline inventories in the United States were projected to have fallen by 900,000 barrels last week, a preliminary Reuters poll showed. Japan's top refiner JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy Corp shut its 90,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) No.3 crude distillation unit (CDU) at the Mizushima-B refinery on April 26 for a scheduled maintenance that is expected to last until early July.