Asia's naphtha crack hit a one week low of $45.78 a tonne on Tuesday on the back of muted demand as most buyers have not yet emerged to seek cargoes for June delivery. The current crack level was about 20 percent lower than a month ago, reflecting that fundamentals at present were weaker and this could be due to crackers in Japan and South Korea going into turnaround mode in May.
Asia's gasoline crack was at a four-session low of $8.27 a barrel but unlike naphtha, the former is more than 35 percent higher than levels from one month ago as seasonal driving demand gave petrol support. In the US for instance, analysts had estimated that stockpiles of gasoline had fallen 2.4 million barrels last week, a preliminary Reuters poll showed on Monday.
If this materialises, it would mark their ninth straight weekly decline. Lyondell Basell Industries has reduced production on its 90,000 barrels per day gasoline-producing Fluidic Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU) at its 263,776 barrel-per-day (bpd) Houston refinery to repair a compressor.
Comments
Comments are closed.