SINGAPORE: Asia's naphtha crack hovered near a two-month low of $51.45 a tonne on Thursday while the gasoline crack was close to a two-week low of $7.61 a barrel due to a supply glut that showed no signs of retreating, traders said.
Singapore's onshore light distillates stocks, made up mostly of gasoline and blendstock for gasoline, rose nearly 7 percent, or 994,000 barrels, to a two-month high of 15.533 million barrels in the week to May 4, official data showed.
That was just 5,000 barrels shy of the record high on March 2 this year.
Taiwan, South Korea, India and Japan had shipped close to 260,000 tonnes of gasoline to Singapore while the Netherlands had shipped about 88,000 tonnes, its highest weekly volume this year to Singapore, following 70,000 tonnes a week earlier.
TENDERS: Qatar's Tasweeq has offered up to 2.7 million tonnes of naphtha for July 2016 to June 2017 loading from Ras Laffan and nearly 200,000 tonnes of spot naphtha for June loading through separate tenders closing on May 17.
Malaysia-based Titan emerged to seek naphtha for June delivery to Pasir Gundang.
Overall demand for naphtha has been generally firm as most Asian crackers are running at high rates to cash in on persistently strong petrochemical margins.
But supplies were also seen rising due to high refinery runs caused by cheap oil, traders said.
CRACKER NEWS: Indonesia's Chandra Asri Petrochemical will lower runs at its 860,000 tonnes per year naphtha cracker by at least 10 percentage points to 70 percent of capacity this month as it plans to shut a furnace for maintenance, trade sources said on Thursday.
This could not be confirmed as there is a holiday in Indonesia.
SINGAPORE CASH DEALS: Two deals.
BP sold to Vitol a 92-octane grade gasoline cargo for May 31 to June 4 loading at $53.50 a barrel and the oil major sold a naphtha cargo for second-half June delivery at $392 a tonne to Trafigura.
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