SINGAPORE: India's Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) has sold a September naphtha cargo at about $12 a tonne above Middle East quotes on a free-on-board (FOB) basis, the lowest sales premium for its cargo sold out of Mumbai in over 2-1/2 years, Reuters data showed.
The Indian refiner sold the 35,000-tonne cargo for Sept. 12-18 loading from Mumbai to Japanese trading house Marubeni late on Tuesday, traders said.
The last time BPCL had sold at a lower premium was for an early December 2011 cargo sold in November of the same year.
BPCL has however cancelled an offer for up to 12,000 tonnes of naphtha scheduled for Sept. 19-25 loading from Haldia, they added. Naphtha supplies in September will be ample due to about 2 million tonnes of European, Mediterranean and US cargoes scheduled to arrive next month in Asia, which needs only about 1.4 million tonnes of western naphtha, traders estimated.
The glut is expected to ease slightly in October as Asia's top naphtha importer Formosa Petrochemical Corp is to restart the largest of three naphtha crackers in end-September following a planned maintenance which started on Aug. 16.
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