Asia's naphtha crack fell for a third straight session on Friday to reach a 1-1/2 week low of $82.98 a tonne as buyers' resistance to recent high premiums could start hurting demand, industry sources said. There was no concrete evidence of any crackers in Asia cutting runs to combat high feedstock costs for now.
Buyers are likely to rely on alternative liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to offset some of the high costs coming from naphtha.
"Next year could be a different story," said one of the sources on possible run cuts in 2020 if petrochemical margins remained squeezed.
Japan's September naphtha imports, at 1.055 million tonnes, were the lowest since June and its ethylene output was at a two-month low of 533,400 tonnes, official data showed.
Asia's gasoline fell to $7.83 a barrel, its lowest since Oct. 1, as higher stockpiles began to weigh.
Gasoline stocks in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) hub rose to a four-week high of 1.024 million tonnes in the week to Thursday after nearing a five-month low in the week to Oct. 10, data from Dutch consultancy Insights Global showed.
This mirrored the trend in Singapore, where its light distillates stocks in the week ended Wednesday surged to a five-week high of nearly 11 million barrels (about 1.3 million tonnes).
China's crude oil throughput rose 9.4% in September from a year earlier to a record 13.75 million barrels per day (bpd), official data showed on Friday, led by increases from new refineries and as some independent plants returned from maintenance.
Russia's September gasoline exports jumped by 27% from August to 475,996 tonnes after completion of maintenance at the Surgutneftegaz-owned Kirishi refinery, railway data and Reuters calculations showed on Friday.
Comments
Comments are closed.