Asia's naphtha crack for first-half April at $72.87 a tonne on Monday reflected a 7 percent fall from the previous session as demand was limited due to the ongoing Lunar New Year festival in China and Taiwan. India's HPCL offered a small cargo of 15,000 tonnes naphtha with a minimum percentage paraffin content of 70 percent for March 1-5 loading from Mumbai through a tender closing on February 20, with bids to stay valid until February 21.

Gasoline stocks held independently at the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) hub rose nearly 11 percent to reach almost 1.3 million tonnes in the week to February 15, highest since July 2016 data from Dutch consultancy PJK International showed. The ARA inventories were in line with the higher gasoline stocks seen in Singapore and the US Naphtha stocks rose by nearly 14 percent to reach a nine-month high of 361,000 tonnes in the week ended Thursday, the data showed.

PJK's Lars van Wageningen said the rise in naphtha stocks was due in part to petrochemical plants favouring more competitively priced LPG feedstock. A fire at the 335,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) Isla oil refinery in Curacao run by Venezuela's PDVSA has been extinguished but its catalytic cracker was halted on Friday for inspections, according to the facility's spokesman.

Shell said a "small fire" which occurred during maintenance on a furnace at its 404,000 barrels-per-day Pernis oil refinery in the Netherlands had been extinguished.

Copyright Reuters, 2018