Asia's naphtha front-month crack for first-half March fell to a four-session low of $89.82 a tonne on Thursday, dragged down by a cracker outage in Japan that came at a time of cracker run cuts across Asia. Asahi Kasei Mitsubishi Chemical Ethylene Corp, a joint venture of Asahi Kasei Corp and Mitsubishi Chemical Corp, has suspended operations at its 567,000 tonnes per year naphtha cracker in Mizushima, Japan, on Tuesday after a malfunction in the refrigerant system, the company said.
The timing to restart operations will be finalised after a detailed inspection on the cracker, the company added. Demand from end-users was mostly muted following a string of purchases since January 7. Taiwan's Formosa Petrochemical Corp and the Philippines' JG Summit were two of the most recent buyers having bought cargoes for February delivery.
Formosa, Asia's top naphtha buyer, paid a premium of about $20 a tonne to its own price formula on a cost-and-freight (C&F) basis for some 50,000 tonnes of open-specification naphtha for Feb. 21-29 arrival at Mailiao.
It had on Dec. 20 paid a premium in the low $20s a tonne for 100,000 tonnes of similar grade scheduled for Feb. 11-20 arrival. JG Summit paid a premium of mid-high teens level a tonne for 30,000 tonnes of naphtha scheduled for February arrival at Batangas.
Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) offered 50,000 tonnes of naphtha for mid-February loading from Ruwais. It has previously sold a cargo for end-January loading at premiums in the $30s a tonne level to its own price formula on a free-on-board (FOB) basis.
Asia's gasoline crack, similar to naphtha, also fell, hitting a five-session low of $4.56 a barrel on ample supplies. Singapore's onshore light distillates inventories rose 8.9% or 1.070 million barrels to reach near a 9-month high of 13.132 million barrels in the week to Wednesday, data from Enterprise Singapore showed. China's CNOOC was looking to sell up to 38,000 tonnes of 92-octane gasoline for Feb. 20-21 loading from Huizhou through a tender.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.