Asia’s naphtha price for first-half September declined on Friday, in tandem with weakness in crude oil benchmarks, but traded above $700 per metric ton.

The backwardation between first-half September and first-half October naphtha price narrowed by $1.50 to $5 a ton but remained largely stable compared to last week’s level of $5.75.

The refining profit for naphtha rose by 2.6% this week to $64.78 per ton amid volatility in crude oil prices. At least one Indian seller was heard offering 35,000 tons of naphtha for August delivery, market participants said.

In gasoline markets, the benchmark margin fell by about 7% this week to $7.37 a barrel over Brent crude as inventories in the United States and Singapore rose. However, the downside was limited due to tight supply-demand balance.

NEWS

– Two large oil tankers were on fire on Friday after colliding in waters near Singapore, the world’s biggest refuelling port, with two crew members airlifted to hospital and others rescued from life rafts, authorities and one of the companies said.

– Traders in oil, gas, power, stocks, currencies and bonds from London to Singapore struggled to operate on Friday as a global cyber outage hampered operations, companies, banks and trading sources said.

– LSEG Group’s Workspace news and data platform suffered an outage on Friday that affected user access worldwide, causing disruption across financial markets.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Mohi Narayan)