Another unexpected refinery outage Thursday on the US Gulf Coast helped push gasoline prices to their highest levels in nearly eight months.

Conventional 9 RVP gasoline was assessed Thursday at NYMEX June RBOB minus 12.40 cents/gal, up 5.10 cents/gal from its monthly low on April 18.

The benchmark's outright price was assessed at $1.487/gal, a 22.23 cents/gal climb from April 18 and its highest level since August 31.

Gulf Coast gasoline prices have climbed steadily since mid-April, supported by refinery outage and a contango in the NYMEX RBOB futures contract.

Motiva on Thursday started unplanned maintenance on a fluid catalytic cracker at its 603,500 b/d refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. The 88,000 b/d unit is expected to be down seven to 10 days, traders said.

The shutdown marked the third unexpected Gulf Coast refinery outage in as many weeks.

Shell shuttered a FCC at its 340,000 refinery in Deer Park, Texas, last week and Houston Refining's 263,776 b/d plant is expected to operate at just 75% of capacity through the second quarter after a fire broke out early this month.

--Joshua Brown, joshua.brown1@platts.com

--Edited by Richard Rubin, richard.rubin@platts.com

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