MOSCOW (MRC) - Asia's refining margins for jet fuel dipped on Tuesday but remained within close sight of multi-month highs touched last week, supported by seasonal heating demand for kerosene and a slow but gradual recovery in regional aviation demand, Reuters.
However, a fast-spreading new coronavirus strain that has shut down much of Britain has prompted several countries to reimpose travel curbs on UK routes, triggering worries about fuel demand recovery and near-term air travel outlook. Refining margins, or cracks, for jet fuel slipped 24 cents to $4.36 per barrel over Dubai crude during Asian trade on Tuesday.
The jet cracks, which also determine the profitability of closely-related kerosene, have gained 37% in the last month, Refinitiv Eikon data showed. Cold season in the northern hemisphere typically brings peak demand for kerosene in Japan and Korea, where the fuel is used as a heating oil to fend off winter chill.
Temperatures in Seoul are expected to stay mostly below normal over the next 15-day period, while temperatures in Tokyo are predicted to be lower than normal in the first week of January, weather forecast models on Refinitiv Eikon showed.
Meanwhile, supporting a steady uptick in aviation demand, scheduled flights operating globally were 40.5% lower in the week to Monday, an improvement from 43.5% a week earlier, according to aviation data firm OAG.
Flights in India were down 34.2% year-on-year in the week to Dec. 21, compared with a 36.4% drop in the preceding week, while flights in Australia were 38% lesser from the corresponding period last year, as against a 45.5% drop in the previous week, OAG data showed.
As MRC informed earlier, Asia's cash differentials for 10 ppm gasoil firmed to their highest level in four-and-a-half months on Monday, while refining margins for the industrial fuel slipped despite weaker prices of raw material crude. Cash discounts for gasoil with 10 ppm sulphur content narrowed by a cent to 4 cents a barrel to Singapore quotes, the smallest discount since differentials plunged into a negative territory on Aug. 11.
We remind that PetroChina has nearly doubled the amount of Russian crude being processed at its refinery in Dalian, the company's biggest, since January 2018, as a new supply agreement had come into effect. The Dalian Petrochemical Corp, located in the northeast port city of Dalian, was expected to process 13 million tonnes, or 260,000 bpd of Russian pipeline crude in 2018, up by about 85 to 90 percent from the previous year's level. Dalian has the capacity to process about 410,000 bpd of crude. The increase follows an agreement worked out between the Russian and Chinese governments under which Russia's top oil producer Rosneft was to supply 30 million tonnes of ESPO Blend crude to PetroChina in 2018, or about 600,000 bpd. That would have represented an increase of 50 percent over 2017 volumes.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing PE and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,760,950 tonnes in the first ten months of 2020, up by 3% year on year. Only high density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 978,870 tonnes in January-October 2020 (calculated using the formula: production minus exports plus imports minus producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply of exclusively of PP random copolymer increased.
MRC