The Asian naphtha market rebounded strongly this week, flipping into a backwardated structure. Naphtha crack vs Brent crude and the benchmark CFR Japan price surged to four-month highs as per Platts. The rally was jumpstarted by continuing uncertainty in the first half of this week over supply. Market talk that India's Reliance Industries Ltd. could face an emergency shutdown of one of the units at its 29 mln tpa (580,000 bpd) Jamnagar refinery, and 100,000-150,000 ton spot purchase from Formosa Petrochemical, had caused concerns about cargo availability.
The CFR Japan physical spreads for H1 November/H2 November and H2 November/H1 December were assessed at plus 75 cents/mt at the Asian close Wednesday, up sharply from minus $1/mt and minus 75 cents/mt respectively Tuesday.
Japan naphtha crack (which measures the premium naphtha commands over Brent crude) and the benchmark CFR Japan flatprice jumped to four-month highs on Wednesday.
01-Oct-10 
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