Northwest European gasoline refining margins slightly declined to $12.40 a barrel on Friday after Atlantic basin stocks rose and data showed a drop in U.S. demand.

A total of 10,000 metric tons of Eurobob E5 traded, with BP, Shell and Vitol selling to ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies and Trafigura.

Shell sold 4,000 tons of Eurobob E10 to Varo.

EIA data showed U.S. gasoline demand was down 1.8% or 165,000 bpd in April from a year earlier at 8.831 million bpd.

Independently held gasoline stocks in storage in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub rose over 9% in the week to Thursday, data from Dutch consultancy Insights Global showed.

Gasoline stocks reached 1.124 million metric tons, the data showed.

Additional blending demand helped push gasoline stock levels higher, Lars van Wageningen of Insights Global said.

U.S. gasoline stocks rose by 2.7 million barrels last week, to 233.9 million barrels, EIA data showed, compared with analysts’ expectation in a Reuters poll for a 1 million-barrel draw.

EU and UK gasoline exports are set to reach 992,000 barrels per day so far in June, broadly stable from May levels, Kpler data showed.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Ron Bousso; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)