Asia Naphtha/Gasoline-Naphtha margin rises amid crude volatility

Asia’s naphtha refining profit margin rose on Thursday amid volatility in crude oil benchmarks and temporary tight supplies from the Middle East owing to plant outages.

The crack NAF-SIN-CRK rose about $5 to $20.45 per metric ton over Brent crude, its highest since Sept. 13. The second-half December naphtha price fell by $5.50 to $621.50 per ton in contango structure.

Middle East naphtha exports to Japan fell by about a third while those to South Korea more than halved. Outflows to India, meanwhile, fell 39% to 50,000 million tons, assessments by LSEG Research showed.

However, supplies from Russia could offset the loss in arrivals from Middle East as refiners in the country finish maintenance, traders said.

INVENTORIES O/SING1

Singapore inventories of light distillates fell by 124,000 barrels to a two-week low of 12.147 million barrels in the week to Nov. 8, data from Enterprise Singapore showed.

Russian arrivals into Singapore jumped to about 112,311 tons in the week to Nov. 8 from 20,500 tons in the prior week, the data showed.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration will delay data on U.S. crude and petroleum inventories to complete a planned systems upgrade, it said. The data will instead be released next Wednesday, Nov. 15, the EIA said.

NEWS

– The government of Shandong province, China’s independent refinery hub, has asked Beijing for an extra 3 million metric tons of fuel oil import quotas for the rest of 2023 to enable plants to raise output amid a shortage of crude oil quotas, trading sources and a consultancy said.

– Global energy trader Gunvor is exiting fuel oil storage at the PetroSeraya terminal in the Asian oil hub of Singapore, with a Sinopec unit set to take over the space, several market sources told Reuters.

SINGAPORE CASH DEALS O/AS

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Source: Reuters (Reporting by Mohi Narayan; Editing by Varun H K)