Asia's naphtha crack retreated to a three-session low of $30.63 a tonne on Friday, after hitting a more than two-week high the previous day, with spot demand mostly muted following a string of recent purchases. These included deals made by the Japanese, South Koreans and Malaysia-based Titan.
An industry source said that maintenance carried out by JXTG Nippon may have prompted buyers to seek spot cargoes although this could not be directly confirmed. JXTG has been carrying out scheduled maintenance at its various crude distillate units (CDUs) across Japan since March. It currently has maintenance works at a 145,000 bpd CDU in Sendai, data from Reuters showed.
Gasoline: Asia's gasoline profit-margin was down to $5.30 a barrel, the lowest since July 25.
Gasoline stocks held independently at the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub at 1.244 million tonnes in the week to August 1 were at their highest since February 14, when they were at 1.261 million tonnes, data from Dutch consultancy Insights Global showed.
This mirrored the trend in Singapore but contrasted with falling stocks in the US.
China's WEPEC has sold up to 36,000 tonnes of 91-octane gasoline for August 28-30 loading from Dalian at premiums of about 50 cents a barrel to Singapore quotes on a free-on-board (FOB) basis. This is down by half compared to a cargo it had previously sold for August 24-26 loading from the same port.