By Rory Carroll
SAN FRANCISCO, May 18 (Reuters) - Wholesale jet fuel pricesin the Los Angeles market remained high on Monday due tomaintenance issues at refineries along the West Coast, promptingshipments from Korea and Japan that are expected to arrive inearly June, traders said on Monday.
Jet fuel in the L.A. market was bid at 50 cents per gallonover June NYMEX heating oil futures on Monday with no traderswilling to sell at that price, traders said. An offer of 75cents a gallon over futures seen on Friday was the highest sinceDecember 2006, according to the California Energy Commission(CEC).
The price surge is due to low supplies caused by plannedmaintenance at Chevron's El Segundo refinery, BP's Cherry Point refinery in Washington state, and thePhillips 66 Wilmington refinery, traders said on Monday.
The unplanned outage of a crude unit at Exxon Mobil's Torrance refinery, which is already operating withoutits primary gasoline-making unit after an explosion rocked thefacility in February, has further constrained jet fuel supply,traders said.
"Even though cargoes came here in May, inventories are leanand nobody is selling," one California-based jet fuel tradersaid on Monday.
Jet fuel production from California refineries was just over2 million barrels for the week ending May 8, down nearly 1percent from output one month ago, according to the CEC. Jetfuel stockpiles fell 2.4 percent over the same time period.
The shortage of jet fuel is part of a wider tightness in theCalifornia fuels market, where recent high gasoline prices arealso attracting imports, experts said.
Two gasoline cargo ships are currently off the coast of LongBeach and Los Angeles waiting to offload, and there are three tofour additional shipments on their way, said Gordon Schremp, asenior fuels analyst with the CEC.
"The market is working," Schremp said. "A very large pricesignal has opened up an arbitrage opportunity and has attractedgasoline cargoes and component cargoes from across the Pacific,Europe and Eastern Canada," he said.
Regular gasoline averaged $3.82 a gallon in California onMonday, more than a dollar more than the $2.71 average seenelsewhere in the country.
"We haven't needed to import a lot of gasoline whatsoeverfrom foreign sources for over five years," Schremp said. "Sothat's another indication that the gasoline market is prettytight here and will remain tight until these major turnaroundsget wrapped up." (Reporting by Rory Carroll)