Asia Distillates-Differentials higher after Singapore refinery fire

SINGAPORE: Asian gasoil and jet fuel cash differentials edged higher on Tuesday after a fire hit a crude distillation unit at a refinery in Singapore, trade sources said.

- SINGAPORE REFINERY FIRE: A fire on Tuesday at Singapore Refinery Co's facility on Jurong Island halted operations of its No. 1 crude distillation unit (CDU), two sources with knowledge of the matter said.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said it was alerted to the fire at the CDU at 9.50 am local time and the fire was extinguished at 11.10 am. No casualties were reported, it said.

Prompt gasoil prices and the east-west gasoil spread rose after news of the fire, a Singapore-based middle distillates broker said.

But there are unlikely to be major disruptions to gasoil cargoes or imports by the refinery given the large system its shareholders have, a Singapore-based trader said.

- CHINA EXPORT QUOTA: China has issued 9.06 million tonnes of refined fuel export quotas under so-called processing trade terms in its third batch of quotas, two trading sources with knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday.

The current round of quotas is 49 percent higher than last year's batch, which were all issued under the processing category, of 6.085 million tonnes. The new quotas increased the total number of processing permits to 24.76 million tonnes in 2017.

- INDONESIA GASOIL: Indonesia's Pertamina is seeking 500ppm sulphur gasoil cargoes for delivery over July to December this year, traders said.

It had earlier awarded a term contract to buy unspecific volumes of 300ppm sulphur gasoil, though details of that were not clear.

INDIA JET EXPORT: Indian Oil Corp has re-offered a tender to sell two cargoes of 13,000 to 16,000 tonnes each of jet fuel for loading from Paradip in July, traders said. It had earlier cancelled a tender offering 15,000 to 16,000 tonnes of jet fuel for July 7 to 8 loading. The reason for the cancellation was not clear.