Asia's naphtha crack slumped 14.5% to a one-and-a-half week low of $83.90 a tonne on Monday, dragged down by muted trades amid the year-end holidays and the recent dreadful petrochemical margins. Although premiums for Indian cargoes scheduled for January loading were down versus December, they were still significantly higher then most of the months in 2019.
India's BPCL for instance had on Friday sold 35,000 tonnes of naphtha to BP for Jan. 10-11 loading from Kochi at premiums of $44.50 to $45 a tonne to its own price formula on a free-on-board (FOB) basis. This was down from near-record high prices of $60 to $60.50 a tonne BPCL had fetched for a December cargo sold to Shell, Reuters data showed.
But the fresh premiums are at least 60% higher when compared to a cargo BPCL sold for October shipment to BP. Gasoline stocks across key regions were higher. Gasoline inventories held independently at the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub rose about 23% in the week to Friday to reach an almost two-and-a-half month high of 994,000 tonnes, data from Dutch consultancy Insights Global showed.
This mirrored the latest data in the United States and Singapore where gasoline stocks were also higher. Neither naphtha nor gasoline deals, with comparatively fewer bids and offers seen for the latter. The Iran-aligned Houthis said on Sunday six "sensitive" places in Saudi Arabia and three in the United Arab Emirates are on a list of military targets, suggesting the group remains prepared to fight on despite informal talks about a truce in Yemen's war.
In September, the Houthis said they would stop attacking Saudi Arabia with missiles and drones if their adversaries attacking Yemen did the same. The Houthis claimed to have carried out a large Sept. 14 attack on Saudi oil giant Aramco, but the United States, European powers and Saudi Arabia blamed the attack on Iran.
The attacks were the catalyst behind the sharp spike in naphtha prices as Aramco went on a buying spree to plug a supply gap. Singapore's Puma Energy, the retail and midstream arm of global commodities trader Trafigura, said on Thursday it would sell its Australian commercial and retail fuels business to Chevron Australia for A$425 million ($288 million).
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