On the naphtha front, cracks fell by almost $3 per tonne day on day with oil futures firmer towards the close of the trading session, while buying in the open market stayed thin.
Sentiment was largely driven by strong production spreads for aromatics products such as PX, some buying activity cracker operators amid narrowing naphtha-ethylene spreads from a week earlier and limited demand from ethylene-based derivatives. There were talks of one South Korean buyer concluding some spot deals for minimum 70% paraffin cargoes in the past two days for first-half May arrival at a premium of high single digit per tonne to CFR Japan prices.
A separate South Korean buyer bought grade A and grade C cargoes at premiums of low $20s per tonne and low $10s per tonne respectively for May delivery. Both buyers are Yeosu-based. A Taiwan-based cracker has postponed its restart timing for one of its units to second-half of April instead of this week. They will shut the remaining smaller crackers for scheduled maintenance after that.
SINGAPORE CASH DEALS - No naphtha, gasoline deals.
NEWS
- Privately controlled Zhejiang Petrochemical Corp (ZPC),
operator of China's largest refinery, said on Thursday it has
reached a strategic agreement with state refining giant Sinopec on the domestic marketing of its fuel. Under a deal
reached earlier this week, Sinopec will handle more than 60% of
ZPC's domestic refined products sales, worth about 55 billion
yuan ($8.0 billion) a year, the company said in a statement
posted on its WeChat account.
- PetroChina's , net profit jumped
62.1% to a record high last year as stronger energy prices more
than offset weak demand for fuel and chemicals, China's largest
oil and gas producer said on Wednesday.
- Oil prices rose about 1% on Thursday, supported by lower
U.S. crude stockpiles and a halt to exports from Iraq's
Kurdistan region, which offset pressure from a
smaller-than-expected cut to Russian supplies. PRICES
LIGHT DISTILLATES
CASH ($/T) ASIA CLOSE Change % Prev RIC
Change Close
OSN Naphtha CFR Japan M1 671.00 -4.25 -0.63 675.25 OSN Naphtha CFR Japan M2 660.00 -4.25 -0.64 664.25 OSN Naphtha Diff 11.00 0.00 0.00 11.00 <NAF-TYO-DIF
>
Naphtha Netback FOB Sing 72.56 -0.47 -0.64 73.03 Naphtha-Brent Crack 83.65 0.00 0.00 83.65 <NAF-SIN-CRK
>
Gasoline 97 99.89 -3.76 -3.63 103.65 Gasoline 95 98.69 -3.82 -3.73 102.51 Gasoline 92 94.15 -4.05 -4.12 98.20 Gasoline crack 15.44 -3.88 -20.08 19.32 <GL92-SIN-CR
K>
For a list of derivatives prices, including margins,
please double click the RICs below.
Brent M1 Naphtha CFR Japan M1 Naphtha CFR Japan M1/M2 Naphtha CFR Japan M2 Naphtha Japan-Sing Netback M1
Naphtha Japan-Sing Netback M2
Naphtha FOB Sing M1 Naphtha FOB Sing M1/M2 Naphtha FOB Sing M2 Naphtha Cracks M1 East-West Naphtha M1 East-West Naphtha M2 NWE Naphtha M1 NWE Naphtha M1/M2 NWE Naphtha M2 Crack NWE Naphtha-Brent M1
Crack NWE Naphtha-Brent M2
*Sing refers to Singapore
(Reporting by Trixie Yap; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)
