Asia’s naphtha price for second-half February cargo slipped on Thursday amid ample supplies in the market, while demand from petrochemical facilities remained poor, traders said.

The crack, however, inched higher to $86.35 per metric ton over Brent crude, compared with $83.75 per ton a day earlier.

January naphtha arrivals into Asia are projected at about 1.9 million ton, up from 1.5 million ton in December, ship-tracking data from Kpler showed.

At the trading window, there were no deals for naphtha. Energy traders Unipec, P66 and Vitol bought a cargo each of benchmark grade of gasoline, market players said.

The gasoline crack rose to $9.98 per barrel over Brent crude on Thursday as inventory build-up in the U.S. offset gains arising from lower inventories at the Singapore trading hub.

INVENTORIES

Singapore inventories of light distillates fell by 716,000 barrels to a four-week low of 12.274 million barrels in the week to Jan. 10, Enterprise Singapore data showed.

U.S. gasoline stocks USOILG=ECI rose by 8 million barrels in the week ended Jan. 5 to 244.98 million barrels, the EIA said, compared with analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll for a 2.5 million-barrel rise.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Mohi Narayan; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)