Taiwan's CPC offers spot naphtha in rare move
SINGAPORE/NEW DELHI, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Taiwan's CPC Corp has offered to sell naphtha cargoes, industry sources said on Tuesday, a rare move by a company which is normally a buyer of naphtha.
CPC has offered at least 70,000 tonnes of the fuel for loading in the first half of March from Kaohsiung and Taipei through a tender due to be awarded this week, the sources said, adding the exact dates were not clear.
The offer comes at a time when naphtha fundamentals are at their weakest in months as lackluster petrochemicals demand sent the crack value down 16% on Monday to a 4-1/2 month low of $60.88 a tonne. <NAF-SIN-CRK>
The crack, or the premium of refining a barrel of Brent crude into naphtha, eased further on Tuesday to $59.28 a tonne, still a 4-1/2 month low.
It was unclear why CPC has offered the petrochemical feedstock but it has shut a 380,000 tonnes per year (tpy) naphtha cracker in Lin Yuan for a scheduled turnaround from November 2019 to January 2020, according to Reuters data.
It has another 720,000 tpy cracker in Lin Yuan but the operating rates of that unit were not clear.
Several naphtha crackers in Asia have cut throughput to combat high naphtha feedstock costs but low petrochemical margins.
CPC also operates two refineries, one in Talin and another in Taoyuan, Taiwan, which have a combined capacity of over 500,000 barrels per day (bpd).
It also has a condensate splitter, which produces naphtha.
Despite the refineries and splitter, the company is net short of naphtha feedstock. (Reporting by Seng Li Peng and Nidhi Verma in New Delhi; Editing by Edmund Blair and Mark Potter)
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