LONDON: Gasoline refining margins in northwest Europe slightly dipped on Wednesday after a draw in US inventories, but low exports and worries over US demand weighed.
US gasoline stocks fell last week by 150,000 barrels, compared with analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 538,000 barrel-drop. A large drop in crude stocks however boosted the market.
US gasoline demand over the past 4 weeks was 9.25 million barrels per day, down 2.4 percent from a year ago, the data showed.
Gasoline exports from Europe to the US East Coast were limited to term volumes and uncertainty over demand in the key consumer country limited the arbitrage, traders said.
Planned refinery turnarounds in France, Italy, Israel, Spain, Poland, and Hungary were helping to keep supplies of oil product in check, traders said.
This comes amid relatively weak arbitrage economics to other regions.
Trading houses Vitol and Trafigura are shipping naphtha from the US Gulf Coast and Venezuela to Europe in a rare arbitrage that is a result of weak demand in Asia and lower demand in the US East Coast, traders said. GASOLINE
No trades of benchmark Eurobob gasoline emerged during the afternoon trading window. There were no bids or offers.
Elsewhere, 10,000 tonnes traded at $500-$511 a tonne fob Amsterdam-Rotterdam, compared with trades at $509-$509.50 a tonne on Tuesday.
Gunvor sold to Total two barges of premium unleaded gasoline at $516 a tonne fob ARA, compared with $504 a tonne a day earlier.
The June swap stood at around $514.50 a tonne at the close, up from $503 a tonne.
Brent crude futures were $1.44 higher at $50.17 a barrel by 1539 GMT.
Gasoline barge refining margins slipped to $12.76 a barrel from $13.435 a barrel on Tuesday.
US front-month RBOB gasoline futures were 2.91 percent higher at $1.5329 a gallon.
The RBOB crack versus US crude stood at $17.04 a barrel, up from $16.68 a barrel at the previous close.
NAPHTHA
PetroIneos sold a cargo to Shell at $430 a tonne cif NWE.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.