Asia’s gasoline trading activity turned brisk on Thursday, although markets were still mulling the demand-supply balance for October.
Supply-side issues will remain the key supportive factor and the wild card may be India’s export volumes, which should decrease given the seasonal peak domestic demand in October, one analyst said.
Blendstocks demand, however, remained firm given the lucrative margins amid wide spreads between octane-92 and octane-95 at more than $7 a barrel, one Singapore-based trading source said.
Demand for higher-octane gasoline is still present given the production outages, a second source said.
Cracks for the motor fuel rebounded to slightly above $15 a barrel as buying in the open trading market was brisk.
On the naphtha front, cracks fell for the second consecutive session to slightly below $20 a metric ton, weighed by a lack of open spot market activity and cautious outlooks.
Cracker outages and maintenance plans in northeast Asia will still cap overall demand for October and November ultimately, a trading source said. Likewise, olefin production spreads remain in the red.
This was despite steady buying interest for heavy naphtha for up to early November deliveries of Middle East-origin cargoes.
There are still quite a few shipments bound for Asia from the Middle East going into October, one shipbroking source said.
INVENTORIES
– Singapore’s light distillates stockpiles fell to an eight-week low of 12.333 million barrels in the week to Sept. 13, official trade data from Enterprise Singapore showed.
– U.S. crude oil stockpiles last week built for the first time in a month due to higher imports and as production recovered to pre-pandemic levels, while fuel inventories jumped as refineries boosted runs to their highest since early 2020, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.
REFINERY NEWS REF/OUT
– Mexico’s Dos Bocas refinery will work at full capacity this year, Energy Minister Rocio Nahle told local media on Wednesday, following production delays and mounting costs.
– The shutdown of Monroe Energy’s 185,000 barrels-per-day refinery in Trainer, Pennsylvania will begin Saturday at midnight, according to a source familiar with the matter.
– Taiwan’s CPC Corp will shut one of its crude distillation units (CDU) and several downstream units including an alkylation unit for maintenance and a steam cracker for repairs in the next few days, a company spokesperson said on Thursday.
NEWS
– The U.S. Energy Department has talked to oil producers and refiners to ensure stable fuel supplies at a time of rising gasoline prices, Jared Bernstein, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said on Wednesday.
SINGAPORE CASH DEALS
– Three gasoline deals, no naphtha deals.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Trixie Yap; Editing by Varun H K)