Buying interest from the petrochemicals sector in Northwest Europe has enlivened the North Sea butane market over the last week, according to industry sources.
Over the summer period, North Sea mixed butane is used by the gasoline-related sector in Northwest Europe in the production of alkylate and MTBE. However, mixed and normal butane can also be used by the petchems sector as an alternative feedstock to naphtha, providing the CIF butane price is at a discount to the CIF naphtha price.
Over the second half of June, activity on the North Sea butane market was extremely thin, with hardly any buying or selling interest seen for spot product.
More recently, however, the market has been a bit busier. At the beginning of this week, Statoil was a seller of 8,000-12,000 mt of either mixed or normal butane at sellers option CIF NWE July 8-12 and offered down to $765/mt when a deal was concluded with Borealis for delivery to their steam cracker at Stenungsund in Sweden.
Although trade sources said demand from the gasoline-related sector is still thin over the balance of July, there has been more demand seen from petchems. Sources added that another North Sea butane cargo was recently concluded into the petchems sector at a delivered price of about 92% of CIF naphtha.
