Gasoline Cracks Pause June Trend Higher

Gasoline crack spreads are edging slightly lower today but still holding onto most of the gains seen this month with support from driving season demand and low US inventories.

• The US front month gasoline crack is down from a high of around 41.27$/bbl on 16 June to 39.8$/bbl today compared to a low of 32.2$/bbl on 2 June.
• Weekly (Sun-Sat) US gasoline demand rose 1.8% last week but was 1.4% below the four week moving average according to GasBuddy data yesterday. EIA data has seen a gradual increase in line with the seasonal trend since April.
• Shipments of gasoline from Europe to the US fell to 308kbpd in the week to 15 June from a revised 478kbpd the previous week according to bills of lading and ship tracking data from Bloomberg. New York received high volumes arriving from Europe, Canada, Saudi Arabia, India and Brazil in early June.
• The strong imports have helped to cover for the ongoing outage to the Phillips 66 Bayway FCC expected until 6 July while the Colonial Pipeline supply to New York Harbor from Gulf Coast has been fully booked for months.