NEW YORK--Gulf Coast spot market pricing differentials
strengthened Monday following news of the unplanned shutdown of
Motiva's new crude unit at its Port Arthur, Texas, refinery making
it the third interruption of the restart process since early
December.
The new 325,000-barrel-a-day crude unit was shut soon after it
was commissioned in May due to a corrosion issue. The Port Arthur
refinery's total crude oil throughput capacity will increase to
600,000 barrels-a-day when the unit is successfully restarted.
Kimberly Windon, spokeswoman for Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA,
RDSA.LN), said the company still plans to have the VPS 5 crude
distillation unit fully restarted "in the early part of this
year."
Gulf Coast M4-grade regular conventional gasoline for prompt
3rd-cycle Colonial Pipeline shipment traded up to 10.65 cents a
gallon below February Nymex RBOB, up from a minus 12 cents
start.
Same-cycle A4-grade conventional-blendstock for oxygenate
blending, or CBOB, traded at 12.75 cents and 13 cents below the
benchmark, and F5-grade reformulated-blendstock for oxygenate
blending, or RBOB, traded at 10.5 cents under. F4-grade RBOB was
assessed at a premium of 1.25 cents to 1.5 cents above
F5-grade.
In distillate trading, prompt 2nd-cycle 54-grade jet fuel rose
sharply in the Gulf Coast hub amid tight supply ahead of the
late-day Colonial Pipeline scheduling deadline.
Several deals were reported done at 2.25 cents, 2.5 cents and
2.75 cents above February Nymex heating oil futures in the
afternoon Platt's market-on-close assessment period, which was up
from deals done earlier on Monday at a penny over the
benchmark.
Ultralow-sulfur diesel fuel, or ULSD, for 2nd-cycle shipment
traded at 2.5 cents and 2.7 cents below February Nymex, which
compares to deals done between 2 cents and 2.5 cents under on
Friday. Same-cycle heating oil ended a half cent down on the day at
minus 5.5 cents.
Front-month February reformulated gasoline blendstock, or RBOB,
settled 1.31 cents, or 0.5%, higher at $2.7774 a gallon. February
heating oil settled 0.5% higher at $3.0321 a gallon.
Write to Rose Marton-Vitale at rose.marton@dowjones.com
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