Asian gasoline cracks hit two-week high, market in backwardation on outages

London, (Quantum Commodity Intelligence) - Spot gasoline cracks in Asia rose to their highest level in over two weeks, as a number of outages across the Middle East and Asia created a shortage of supply, turning the spot-front month spread into backwardation from contango last week.

According to Quantum data, the spot price of gasoline jumped $1.04/b on the day to $79.42/b FOB Singapore ($675/mt), compared to a $0.65-0.70 rise further along down the curve.

The rally, which saw a number of bids versus few offers as well as a trade at $79.50/b for nearby loading dates, meant the prompt versus front month swap fell rose from -$0.32/b to $0.17/b, a jump of almost $0.50/b on the day.

That left the spot gasoline RON 92 crack at $5.95/b versus August cash Brent – the highest level since 28 May, according to Quantum data.

The firmness is due to the unexpected shutdown of the fluid catalytic unit at Reliance's 700,000 bpd refinery in Gujarat due to unspecified reasons, sources said.

The unit, which produces light ends and distillates from heavier feedstock, is expected to be down until late June.

The news comes on top of reports that a fire broke out late Friday at a storage tank at Pertamina's 350,000 bpd Cilacap refinery, which was maximising output to cover a shortfall at a different Indonesia refinery that was hit by a fire in March.

And follows last week's news that Adnoc's Ruwais refinery suffered an outage at its residue fluid catalytic cracker.