Naphtha demand in Asia for August and September will considerably weaken owing to the shutdown of key crackers. Amongst the crackers going offline, the major ones include Formosa's 1.2 mln tpa cracker which closes for a 40 day period in mid-September. Also, the CPC Corp will close doors on its 450,000 tpa cracker in mid-August. This will spell a major blow to the naphtha demand by about 400,000 tons in Asia.
Compounding the weak demand situation will be a supply glut anticipated to be caused by 350,000 tons of cargo expected to land into Asia from the Mediterranean. The supply glut is expected to continue in September as well as an almost identical amount of naphtha is expected to find its way from Europe owing to the frail demand in Europe. As of now, 170,000 tons of naphtha for September have already been booked into Asia from Europe.
07-Aug-08 
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