Pertamina sells rare 400,000 barrels of naphtha lifting from Balikpapan to Unipec

16-Jul-14

Indonesia's state-owned Pertamina has sold a total of 400,000 barrels of naphtha lifting from Balikpapan to Unipec in an unusual move, as per traders in Reuters. Pertamina does not regularly export naphtha and does not comment on its sales or purchases of oil products. It was unclear what had promoted the refiner to sell the two light fuel cargoes for July lifting, with traders estimating the premiums to be between US$3-4 a barrel to Pertamina's own formula on a free-on-board (FOB) basis. A 200,000 barrel cargo will be loaded between July 17 and 18 and the other cargo is scheduled for late July loading, trade and shipping sources said, without elaborating on when the deals were done. Naphtha supplies are currently tight due to strong demand from the petrochemical sector coinciding with the gasoline peak demand season. A series of previous and ongoing plant outages and maintenance in India had dented the country's light distillates supplies, with ONGC having cancelled a naphtha cargo for Aug. 9-10 loading after gas supply to its Hazira complex was disrupted. These factors drove the Asian naphtha crack to a 17-month high of $174.63 a tonne on July 14. Unipec could have also bought 230,000 barrels of naphtha from Saudi Arabia's Samref for July 25-27 loading from Yanbu but this could not be verified.