India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) sold a July naphtha cargo at $16 a tonne above Middle East quotes on a free-on-board basis, traders said, making this the lowest premium the company has received in more than three months for a naphtha cargo sold out of Hazira.
ONGC sold the 34,500-tonne cargo late on Tuesday to Japan’s Petro-Diamond for July 12-13 loading from Hazira.
The fresh premium was about 30 per cent lower than the average premium of $23 a tonne ONGC got for two cargoes sold out of the same port for June loading.
The last time ONGC, which also exports naphtha from Mumbai, received a premium lower than $16 was in January 2015 when it sold a February 8-9 loading cargo to Unipec.
Traders said expectation of high volumes of western naphtha coming to Asia in July had hurt sentiment.
Asia has been receiving about 1.8 million tonnes of the fuel from Europe and the Mediterranean since May, 12.5 per cent higher than the averagely monthly volume in 2014.
But some sellers were optimistic that the market will improve in August as Taiwan’s Formosa and Japan’s Mitsui Chemical’s crackers would have resumed operations by late July following planned maintenance
