LONDON: Benchmark northwest European gasoline refining margins rose on Tuesday as crude prices fell for a second day this week. Oil prices dropped $1 on Tuesday as OPEC and its allies postponed a formal meeting to decide whether to lift output from January.

Despite weak fundamentals, the economics on the arbitrage from NWE to the United States have slowly improved this month, prompting some buying interest as traders bet on a recovery in demand next year, Refinitiv analysts said.

Nigeria will offer free conversion to enable some cars to run on gas, and its Central Bank will make some 250 billion naira ($656.69 million) available for infrastructure in a bid to expand gas use and cut reliance on imported fuel, the government said on Tuesday.

President-elect Joe Biden's promise to end US fossil fuel subsidies worth billions of dollars a year for drillers and miners could be hard to keep due to resistance from lawmakers in a narrowly divided Congress, including from within his own party.

Gasoline stocks held in independent storage in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub fell marginally to 1.32 million tonnes, as fewer imports from other northwest European locations arrived at the hub, data from Dutch consultancy Insights Global showed.