The transatlantic gasoline arbitrage was closed after imports into the US East Coast rose sharply last week, traders said.

ARA gasoline prices were nevertheless supported by strong demand from inland buyers in Germany where a string of refinery outages has led to a shortage in local production, traders and brokers said.

The outages at the Leuna and PKN refineries in Germany were due

to lower crude processing as a result of disruption in the Druzhba crude pipeline from Russia, the traders said.

Russia has begun shipping clean oil via the Baltic after a contamination problem disrupted flows for three weeks.

It is working to resume pipeline supplies to Europe, although traders said this might take several more weeks to fix.

Polish pipeline operator PERN will resume the flow of Russian oil if requested to by its refinery clients, PERN's chief executive said on Tuesday, as refiners attempt to manage the fallout from contaminated Russian oil supplies.

FACTBOX-Russian oil flows to Europe drop amid contamination

Royal Dutch Shell began restarting the gasoline-producing unit at its 218,200 barrel-per-day (bpd) Norco, Louisiana, refinery on Sunday, sources familiar with plant operations said on Monday.