Naphtha crack up rises for first time in 10 days

06-Jun-14

Naphtha crack in Asia rose for the first time in about 1-1/2 weeks on Thursday, recovering from a near three-month low to a 4 session high of US$132.60/ton as an outage at a secondary unit in a South Korean plant lifted sellers' sentiment, as per Reuters. GS Caltex Corp has unexpectedly shut a 60,000-barrels-per-day (bpd) hydrocracker. Although the shutdown could be brief and last for no more than a week, traders said there could be a possibility the refiner may need to lower its crude runs although this could not be immediately confirmed. "I suspect GS Caltex may lower its crude throughput. Apart from the outage, the naphtha crack value is also undergoing correction as it has been falling for many days and was trading at lower end of the range," said a trader. Asia is structurally short of naphtha and any unexpected disruptions would give the bulls an opportunity to turn the weak sentiment around.