Asia Naphtha/Gasoline-Gasoline margin posts about 17% weekly gain

Asia’s gasoline refining margin jumped about 17% this week as supplies tightened due to outages and smaller Chinese volumes and low inventories across key trading hubs.

The crack rose to $19.86 a barrel over Brent crude on Friday and the price of benchmark grade of the fuel rose to $104.10 per barrel. The margin hit over one-year high of $20.71 earlier this week.

At the window, 50,000 barrels of the higher 95-octane grade of the fuel was traded, market participants said.

“Supplies from China have declined in August compared to last couple of months,” a Singapore-based gasoline trader said.

Meanwhile, the naphtha crack gained around 92% this week to $36.70 per metric ton over Brent crude.

INVENTORIES

Gasoline inventories at the commercial hub of Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (AR) declined 8% to 1.34 million metric tons in the week to Thursday as transatlantic exports picked up, data from Dutch consultancy Insights Global showed.

Naphtha stocks eased slightly to 235,000 tons, compared with 256,000 tons in the prior week, the data showed.

SINGAPORE CASH DEALS O/AS

One gasoline trade, no naphtha deals.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Mohi Narayan; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)