(EnergyAsia, February 21, Thursday) — India’s gasoline surplus and Iran’s increasing inability to secure letters of credit will drive Asian gasoline cracks down to below $6 per barrel by the end of 2008, predicts US consultant ESAI.

In the February 2008 issue of its Pacific Basin Stockwatch, a six-month outlook on Asia-Pacific product markets, ESAI examines the Asian gasoline market by looking at India’s supply and demand, as well as its gasoline trade with Iran.

ESAI said the disruption of India-Iran gasoline contracts has forced India to sell gasoline elsewhere. Singapore was a logical choice.

“Indian gasoline exports into Singapore surged to 43,000 b/d in the last quarter of 2007, compared to just 16,000 b/d in the first nine months of the year,” ESAI’s analyst Joy Siew writes.

The imminent launch of Reliance’s 580,000 b/d Jamnagar refinery will further exacerbate the situation.

“Reliance’s mammoth Jamnagar refinery is set to commence as early as August this year, and will expand the Indian surplus for the last few months of the year by at least 40,000 b/d from the same period a year ago.”

ESAI is an energy research and consulting firm located outside of Boston, Massachusetts.