Asia’s gasoline markets were little changed on Monday in the absence of deals at the Singapore trading window, but sentiment remained supportive over tight supplies amid regional maintenance at several plants.

The crack was down by about 25 cents to $15.09 a barrel over Brent crude. The price for the benchmark grade of gasoline traded near a more than two-year high of about $109 per barrel on Monday.

“Prompt timespreads remain in steep backwardation of over $3 per barrel indicating Asian gasoline remains well supported for now, but this is increasingly fragile into the fourth quarter,” consultancy Energy Aspects said in a monthly report dated Sept. 14.

Meanwhile, the naphtha crack fell by $1.70 to $7.80 per metric ton on Monday over tepid petrochemical demand, analysts and traders said. The price of first-half November naphtha eased by $2 to $714 per metric ton, market participants said.

NEWS

China’s gasoline exports were up 23.7% last month to 1.38 million tons from 1.12 million tons in August last year, data showed on Monday. Domestic demand for gasoline was anticipated to be high through August because of a pick-up in road traffic over the summer travel period, the first since 2019 not to be disrupted by COVID-19 containment measures.

– Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) said on Monday it was working to restore full production capacity at Kuwait’s Mina al-Ahmadi and Mina Abdullah refineries after they lost power on Sunday night.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Mohi Narayan; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)