China's Unipec has paid about mid-to-high $20s a tonne level to Japan quotes on a cost-and-freight (C&F) this week for naphtha scheduled for first-half February delivery, traders said. India's Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) sold 35,000 tonnes of naphtha for January 21-22 loading from Kochi at a premium of about $18 a tonne to its own price formula on a free-on-board (FOB) basis to PetroChina, traders added.
The refiner had previously sold a cargo out of Mumbai for January 10-12 loading to BP at premiums of about $13. Asia's gasoline crack eased to $7 a barrel, reflecting a two-session low but lower versus $11 from a year ago. High inventories and cold snaps across regions have dented travelling. For instance, heavy snow had pounded the East Coast in the US from Maine as far south as North Carolina on Thursday, taking out power lines, icing roadways and closing schools.
Even in an unusually dry summer in New Zealand, gale-force winds had battered its North Island on Friday, tearing off roofs, bringing down trees, cutting power and forcing residents to flee flooded seaside towns. In China, there were warnings of a second wave of snow and sleet hitting northern, central and eastern parts of the country on Friday after record snowfall paralysed parts of the country.
Gasoline stocks held in independent storage in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) storage and refining hub hit a four-week high of 861,000 tonnes in the week to December 4, data from Dutch consultancy PJK International showed. Naphtha stocks in ARA were also up, hitting a 5-1/2 month high of 311,000 tonnes, the data showed. The higher stocks in general mirrored the trends in Singapore and the US.