Naphtha prices rose to week highs

13-Jun-11

Asia's naphtha price rose to a week high on Thursday, but cracks stayed at a 10-month low and timespreads reverted to negative for the first time in several sessions as sentiment weakened with higher supplies, as per Reuters. Demand is expected to shrink further on outages. Japan's Tonen Chemical shut its 491,000 tpa naphtha cracker in Kawasaki from around noon on Thursday due to problems. Formosa has not yet restarted a cracker after it shut following a fire at a pipeline on May 12. Adding to these are expectations of higher spot supplies. Since few customers had recently either dropped or reduced their term volumes with Gulf suppliers, and these cargoes are expected to find their way into the spot market sooner or later. ADNOC and Tasweeq are expected to sell at least a total of 200,000 tons of spot naphtha for July, while Kuwait Petroleum Corp (KPC) will be starting its term talks next week in London. Open Spec Naphtha for front-month H2-July recovered by nine dollars to US$963/ton, its highest since June 1. Naphtha cracks fell by over six dollars to US$78.08/ton premium, lowest since Aug. 4, 2010.