Gulf Coast Spot Gasoline Price up on Motiva Crude Unit Shutdown

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 [e-mail]

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