SINGAPORE: Asia’s naphtha crack rose for the sixth straight session on Friday to hover at a one-month high of $82.70 a tonne, supported by fewer cargoes arriving in April from the West.

Recent demand from North Asia, especially Taiwan, also gave the market support as it help soaked up some supplies after Asia was hit by huge volumes of naphtha arriving in the West including Europe and the Mediterranean.

China’s Unipec was in talks to buy naphtha this week and this came after Taiwan’s Formosa, CPC, South Korea’s Hanwha and Malaysia-based Titan had bought a total of over 300,000 tonnes of naphtha for first-half April delivery.

Western cargoes scheduled for Asia arrival this month were expected to be around 1 million tonnes versus more than 1.4 million tonnes each for January and February arrival.

Refineries operated by Taiwan’s Formosa, Indian Oil Corp (Paradip), Japan’s JXTG (Kawasaki) and South Korea’s SK Energy will shortly be shutting their crude units for maintenance and this would affect naphtha production in March.

However, Japan’s Showa Denko and Tosoh have scheduled for their crackers to be idled this month for maintenance and that could wipe out more than 300,000 tonnes of naphtha demand a month.

Asia’s gasoline crack slipped to a three-session low of $8.56 a barrel.

Gasoline stocks held independently at the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub eased 1.4 percent from a 19-month high in the previous week to a two-week low of 1.323 million tonnes in the week ended Thursday, data from Dutch consultancy PJK International showed.

Despite easing, the gasoline stocks were still at high levels as they were at least 17 percent higher than a year ago, the data showed.

Naphtha stocks at the ARA hub also fell, but to a six-week low of 308,000 tonnes, the data also showed.—Reuters