Cracks Spreads Ease Back from Highs Last Week

Gasoline front month crack spreads have pulled back to Jan 19 levels after the US spread reached a high of just over 20$/bbl last week as the market assess soft demand against refinery outages.

• US gasoline demand was still 0.4% below the four-week average last week despite rising by 2.9% from the previous week to above 8mbpd according to GasBuddy.
• Two tankers carrying more than 140k tons of US gasoline are headed for Asia-Pacific markets in a rare trade flow according to Kpler data. Asia’s gasoline supplies are tight due to a series of planned and unplanned refinery maintenance according to Bloomberg sources. Increasing freight costs may help to limit any further cargoes on the route.
• Russia’s oil-processing rates remained relatively resilient in the latest week according to Bloomberg with the impact of drone attacks on refineries yet to fully materialise in the processing figures.
  • RBOB FEB 24 down -0.5% at 2.22$/gal
  • EU Gasoline-Brent down -0.7$/bbl at 12.58$/bbl
  • US gasoline crack down -0.6$/bbl at 17.8$/bbl