London (Platts)--6May2011/649 am EDT/1049 GMT

More cargoes of refrigerated propane are flowing into Northwest Europe in thriving petchem sector demand, industry sources said Friday.

The arrival of warm weather has reduced demand in the traditional heating market, but healthy demand has emerged from the petrochemicals sector where propane is used as an alternative feedstock to naphtha as long as the delivered price of propane is at a discount to that of naphtha.

During the latter part of April, sources said that over 100,000 mt of propane from Algeria and the US Gulf arrived in Northwest Europe with Dow, Borealis and Sabic all reported to have received refrigerated imports to use as feedstock.

Trading sources said that more imports, totaling about 120,000 mt, were expected to arrive in Northwest Europe during the first fifteen to 20 days of May, with suggestions of even more cargoes towards the end of the month.

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	LP Gaswire reports on the LPG/NGL industry every business day. It details emerging market trends, pricing, and market news for ethane, iso-butane, natural gasoline, normal butane, and propane in the Japan, Arabian Gulf, Mediterranean, Northwest Europe, and U.S. Gulf Coast markets.

Petchems were again reported to be the main recipient of these imports.

Despite the volume of exports already discharged and expected the propane/naphtha price ratio has not changed significantly.

Based on Platts data, the price ratio was just over 90% in the middle of April, increased slightly to 91.8% by the end of the month before reaching a last published level of 92.1%.

--Derek Hardy, derek_hardy@platts.com