LONDON: Northwest European gasoline refining margins fell on Monday after hitting a three-month high last week, but cracks were still supported by busy spot cargo bookings to the US Higher prices on the back of a pipeline outage in the United States have spurred several bookings from Europe to go the East Coast in the past week.
Colonial Pipeline Co said on Saturday it resumed repairing a leak on a key US gasoline line on Friday afternoon, but pump prices continued to rise in the southeast as several states took emergency action to get fuel to filling stations more easily.
Additionally, the "front of the curve is hugely backwardated, so anyone with product in tank needs to shift it," a gasoline trader said.
A dollar shortage in Nigeria is making the arbitrage from Europe difficult to work, traders said.
Europe has been soaking naphtha from the east as weak Asian prices open up the rare arbitrage.
At least one medium-range size tanker and two long-range 1 (LR1) vessels carrying naphtha of Middle Eastern and Indian origin totalling over 140,000 tonnes had already landed in Northwest Europe, traders said.
Upcoming refinery shutdowns in Europe and the Middle East could dent supplies and support light-end margins.
Saudi Aramco has scheduled maintenance at its refinery in Yanbu and its largest refinery in Ras Tanura in November and December, sources said.
Yanbu Aramco Sinopec Refining Co (Yasref), is expected to shut its 400,000 barrel-per-day refinery complex for 10-15 days of maintenance in November.
Saudi Aramco plans to carry out maintenance at the Ras Tanura refinery in December for 20-25 days, which may involve only the 325,000-bpd crude distillation unit (CDU), the sources added.
GASOLINE
Vitol sold two barges of benchmark Eurobob barges to Shell at $491 a tonne fob ARA.
Some 8,000 tonnes traded earlier in the day at $489 a tonne fob Amsterdam-Rotterdam, compared with $483-$486 a tonne on Friday. Statoil, NIC and BP sold to Shell and Rolympus.
Rolympus sold to Total two barges of premium unleaded gasoline at $504 a tonne fob ARA, up from $502 a tonne the previous session.
The October swap stood at around $468 a tonne at the close, up from $465 a tonne.
Gasoline barge refining margins declined to $12.29 from $12.92 a barrel on Friday.
Brent crude oil futures were up $1 at $46.77 a barrel by 1539 GMT.
US October RBOB gasoline futures were down 0.47 percent at 1.4547 a gallon.
The US gasoline crack was trading at $17.04 a barrel, down from $18.91 a barrel.
NAPHTHA
BP sold to Statoil a cif NWE cargo at $395.50 tonne.
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