Cracks creep up as crude prices slip

Benchmark northwest European gasoline barge refining margins rose to $4.30 a barrel on Friday as crude prices dipped on China demand concerns and a small decline in northwest European stocks.

• Oil prices slipped on Friday in thin market liquidity, closing a week marked by worries about Chinese demand and haggling over a Western price cap on Russian oil.

• Total U.S. gasoline inventories are now roughly equal to the 2015-2019 average, although East Coast stocks are 11.1 millions barrels below the 2015-19 average for this time of the year, their lowest level since November 2012, according to energy consultancy FGE.

• The low stocks in one of the highest-demand geographies for gasoline helped boost European cracks by about $4 from Monday.

• Also bullish for cracks, gasoline stocks held in independent storage in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage area fell to 1.269 million tonnes in the week to Thursday, data from Dutch consultancy Insights Global showed.

• South Korea has started importing naphtha from Tunisia, which in turn has seen a jump in supplies from Russia, highlighting the unusual trading routes that are emerging following Western sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.