Houston (Platts)--12 Nov 2015 548 pm EST/2248 GMT

The outright price for US Gulf Coast low sulfur vacuum gasoil reached a six-year low Thursday on weaker front-month WTI futures, which fell on bearish government data.

Despite an unchanged cash price at WTI plus $8/b, USGC vacuum gasoil with a maximum sulfur content of 0.05% fell to $49.77/b, its lowest value since March 13, 2009, when it was assessed at $49.25/b.

NYMEX December crude settled $1.18 lower Thursday at $41.75/b.

Differentials for VGO have been slowly climbing since mid-October on improving cracking margins for refined products. But with outright prices for feedstocks and motor fuels falling on large inventories, those cracks have decreased.

The crack for LSVGO against unleaded gasoline in the USGC was minus 70 cents/b Thursday, the first time the margin was negative since October 21. The crack against diesel was $6.47/b, the lowest since October 29.

US commercial crude oil stocks increased 4.224 million barrels to 487.034 million barrels in the week that ended November 6, according to Energy Information Administration data released Thursday.

Analysts surveyed Monday by Platts were looking for an inventory decrease of 500,000 barrels compared with the previous week.

The US refinery utilization rate increased 0.8 percentage point to 89.5% of operable capacity, driven exclusively by the Midwest, where the rate jumped 8.2 percentage points to 87.7%.

--Joshua Brown, joshua.brown1@platts.com
--Edited by Keiron Greenhalgh, keiron.greenhalgh@platts.com

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