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* About 1.7 mln tonnes of gasoline booked in August
* Outages at Whiting, Philadelphia refineries limit supplies
By Simon Falush and Ron Bousso
LONDON, Aug 13 (Reuters) - A string of refinery outagesacross the United States and unrelenting demand for gasoline inthe country have given European gasoline a late boost to counterthe traditional decline in overseas demand as summer draws to aclose.
About 1.7 million tonnes of gasoline have been booked forloading in August from Europe to the east coast of the UnitedStates and the Gulf Coast, Reuters ship-tracking data showed, inwhat traders said has been an exceptionally strong month.
With oil prices more than halving over the past year,demand for gasoline in the United States has surged in recentmonths as motorists drive more and buy larger cars.
U.S. and global demand for gasoline has been the main enginesupporting refining margins in recent months.
The difference between the prices of crude oil and gasoline , used to gauge the profitability of refining, hasrisen to about $30 a barrel, its widest in a month.
The greater the spread, the more attractive it becomes forforeign producers to ship crude to the United States forrefining.
Though U.S. demand usually ebbs towards the end of the peakdriving season, unplanned refinery breakdowns have constrainedsupplies and revived the market.
An outage at BP'S 413,500 barrel per day Whitingrefinery in Indiana has limited supplies in the Chicago area,which has drawn fuel from the U.S. Gulf Coast inland, traderssaid.
The 88,000 bpd fluid catalytic cracking unit at PhiladelphiaEnergy Solutions' refinery shut after an attempt tobring it back to full rates on Wednesday and Marathon PetroleumCorp has shut its 212,000 bpd refinery at Robinson,Illinois, for more than two months of work.
Several refinery outages in Venezuela also limited oilproducts supplies in the Atlantic basin, traderssaid.
As a result, a higher than usual number of gasoline cargoeshave been booked in recent days from Europe to the U.S. GulfCoast, traders said.
"The U.S. mid-continent will have to pull more from the U.SGulf, which will then tighten U.S. gasoline export capacity andtherefore provide new opportunities for exports from Europe,"said Olivier Jakob at Petromatrix in Zug, Switzerland.
The tighter supplies have been particularly pronounced forgasoline components such as reformate and alkylate, which is used for blending into high-octane super unleaded gasoline.
"It is the end of the summer and while overall gasolinestocks are higher, blending components are still tight and theimpending switch to winter-grade fuel makes resupply fromforeign suppliers difficult," Energy Aspects analyst RobertCampbell said.
(Reporting by Ron Bousso and Simon Falush; Editing by DavidGoodman)
