Asia's naphtha crack rose to a four-session high of $28.25 a tonne on Friday, supported by weaker feedstock oil prices. South Korea's Lotte Chemical and Hanwha Total were out to buy naphtha for second-half June delivery, but the exact price details were unclear.
Industry sources estimated the prices to be at a slight discount a tonne to Japan quotes on a cost-and-freight (C&F) basis.
Prices in South Korea and Taiwan in late April briefly improved when LG Chem paid a premium of $1.50 a tonne on April 27 while Formosa paid parity on April 29.
On the other hand, KPIC in late April concluded a term tender to buy four cargoes of naphtha for July 2020 to June 2021 delivery.
The cargoes, at between 25,000 and 35,000 tonnes each, are to be delivered quarterly, industry sources said.
KPIC's term price was sealed at a single-digit discount a tonne to Japan quotes on a C&F basis, industry sources said.
India's Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd on May 5 sold 35,000 tonnes of naphtha to Vitol for May 17-19 loading from Mumbai at discounts of around $5 a tonne to its own price formula on a free-on-board (FOB) basis, industry sources said.
Formosa has a tender to sell spot gasoline cargoes for June loading on Friday but the results were unclear.
This is the first spot offer after Formosa sold gasoline in the spot for March loading.
Formosa made the spot offers as it has not tied up any of its cargoes under term contracts due to bad demand, its spokesman said.
Lotte Chemical aims to restart a 1.1 million tonnes per year (tpy) naphtha cracker in Daesan this year after the unit was shut following an explosion in March.
Gasoline stocks held independently at the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub surged 13.4% to reach a 15-month high of 1.36 million tonnes in the week to Thursday, data from Dutch consultancy Insights Global showed.
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