European gasoline margins fall

Benchmark northwest European gasoline refining margins fell on Wednesday after US stocks rose unexpectedly last week, but an unplanned shutdown at a major regional refinery capped losses. US gasoline stocks rose by 1.9 million barrels last week, the US Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday. That compared with analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 1.4 million-barrel drop.
BP shut a 200,000 bpd crude distillation unit and a 35,000 bpd naphtha hydrotreater at its Rotterdam oil refinery on Wednesday, industry monitor Genscape reported. A BP spokeswoman declined a Reuters request for comment. Trading sources said the shutdown was likely unplanned. "The first quarter of gasoline demand data now available for most countries has not been encouraging so far, particularly for the East of Suez," consultants JBC Energy said in a note.
"We have already revised our forecast downwards in response to higher prices and are currently expecting gasoline demand to grow in 2018 by some 260,000 b/d y-o-y," they added. No EBOB barges traded in the afternoon trading window, but a bid surfaced at $751 a tonne fob ARA, compared with offer levels of $756 a tonne on Tuesday. Elsewhere, 11,000 tonnes of Eurobob gasoline traded at $750.50 a tonne fob Amsterdam-Rotterdam, compared with trades at $758 and $763 a tonne on the previous day. Gunvor and Litasco sold to Vitol and Shell.
Gunvor sold a barge of E10 at $749 a tonne fob Amsterdam-Rotterdam, down from $758 a tonne on Tuesday. Statoil sold a barge of premium unleaded gasoline Total at $757 a tonne fob ARA, down from trades the previous day at $767 a tonne. The June swap stood at $754.50 a tonne at the close, down from $765.50 a tonne. The benchmark EBOB gasoline refining margin fell to $10.202 a barrel from $10.623 a barrel. Brent crude futures were down 17 cents at $79.40 a barrel by 1550 GMT.