Asia's naphtha crack ended the week at a 2-1/2 month high of $57.55 a tonne as demand from petrochemical makers provided support. South Korea's Hanwha Total bought three cargoes totalling an average of 75,000 tonnes for second-half April arrival at Daesan at premiums of about $6 a tonne to Japan quotes on a cost-and-freight (C&F) basis.
This was slightly higher than the $5 a tonne premium Hanwha Total had paid on Feb. 26 for first-half April delivery cargoes. This brought the total number of volumes bought this week for second-half April delivery from Taiwan, South Korea and Malaysia to more than 320,000 tonnes. Japan's Petro-Diamond has bought 35,000 tonnes of naphtha for March 27-29 loading from New Mangalore from MRPL while Emirates National Oil Company bought similar volumes from Oil & Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) for April 1-2 loading from Mumbai.
Traders said ENOC paid a premium of around $20 to $21 a tonne to Middle East quotes on a free-on-board (FOB) basis. Gasoline stocks in independent storage in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub were down 4.6 percent in the week to Thursday at 1.07 million tonnes, lowest since Dec. 20, data from Dutch consultancy PJK International showed. Shell said Asian naphtha cracker margins fell sharply in Q4 2018 on concerns over the potential impact of US tariffs. US ethane cracker margins were pressured by new capacity additions. But in Europe, demand was healthy and naphtha cracker margins in the region decreased the least in 2018.
India's Reliance Industries said it had halted supply of diluents to Venezuela's national oil company PDVSA and will not resume such sales until sanctions are lifted. PDVSA was importing about 100,000 bpd of naphtha, mostly from the United states, to dilute up to 400,000 bpd of extra heavy oil and make it exportable.
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