London — Gasoline cargoes heading from Northwest Europe to Canada and the US so far in August amounted to 1.32 million mt as of Monday, according to S&P Global Platts trade flow software cFlow, with expected arrivals in the fourth week of the month at 326,000 mt.
The tightness of gasoline in Northwest Europe has been a recurring theme, with expected arrivals in August down 39.6% from July's figure.
"The buying on the prompt has led to more backwardation. It is another issue causing tightness in the North," a trader said.
Flows into the US have also been dampened by the emergence of buying interest from Asia for European gasoline amid outages last week in Saudi Arabia's Yasref refinery and India's Jamnagar plant. Operator Reliance Industries declared a force majeure last week on gasoline exports from Jamnagar.
"We saw six LR1s moving [gasoline from Europe to the Persian Gulf], so the Europeans are rather lucky," an India-based trader said.
A total of 11 tankers likely carrying gasoline have sailed from Northwest Europe and the Baltic headed for North America in the past seven days, according to data from cFlow. Some eight Medium Range tankers were set to arrive on the US East Coast and three MRs were set to discharge in Canada.
Furthermore, the US Energy Information Administration said total motor gasoline heading into the East Coast was down by 217,000 b/d to 582,000 b/d, a fall of 27.2% in the week to August 10. Motor gasoline imports into the US Gulf Coast over the same week fell 18,000 b/d, or 34%, to 35,000 b/d.
