Asia's naphtha falls to five-week low

Asia's naphtha extended its substantial losses for a third straight session on Thursday, this time falling by 10% to hit a five-week low of $62.70 a tonne as weak petrochemical margins weighed on the market.

Between Monday and Thursday, the naphtha crack has lost 30.4%, Reuters data showed.

There was talk of run cuts at one of Asia's smallest cracker by capacity, industry sources said, but this could not be directly confirmed.

Crackers use mainly naphtha as feedstock to produce petrochemical products, with some using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to replace a small portion of the former.

Ample supplies of LPG have enabled these crackers to continue replacing some of their naphtha even into the winter months.

Traditionally, LPG is more expensive towards the fourth quarter as it is also used for heating.

India's ONGC offered 35,000 tonnes of naphtha for Dec. 2-3 loading from Mumbai through a tender due to be awarded on November 14.

Asia's gasoline crack hit a three-week high of $8.71 a barrel in line with strong demand in the United States.

US gasoline stocks for instance fell for a sixth straight week, with a 2.8 million-barrel draw, data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed.

Stockpiles of gasoline in the US Midwest were at their lowest levels in a year.

But gasoline inventories in Singapore were near a 4-1/2 month high of 11.739 million barrels in the week to November 6, data from Enterprise Singapore showed.