2007 and 2008 have been years where the world’s production and refining capacity were being tested, 2009 is the year where the world’s storage capacity is being tested. With industrial demand down more than driving demand and with the combination of a contango in Distillates and a backwardation in Gasoline, Distillates is driving Gasoline out of storage capacity and this is then making Day-Of-Cover picture in Gasoline not very different to previous years.

This then makes Gasoline still exposed, like in previous years, to supply glitches and evidence of this was provided this week with a few cracker problems surfacing which then had a direct impact on Gasoline prices. Early this year the Gasoline crack was trading in the negative, but these days are gone and is it becoming harder to discount too easily the picture of Gasoline market which seems much more balanced than the Distillates market.