U.S. Gulf Coast cash gasoline jumps on refinery outage

(Adds detail about outages, prices and gasoline stocks)

HOUSTON, April 19 (Reuters) - U.S (Other OTC: UBGXF - news) . Gulf Coast cash gasoline differentials rose on Tuesday as Shell (LSE: RDSB.L - news) shut a key gasoline-making unit at its Deer Park, Texas, refinery for up to six weeks for repairs.

A fluid catalytic cracking unit at the 316,000 barrels per day refinery was shut because of an equipment malfunction, sources familiar with refinery operations said.

A Shell spokesman confirmed that a process unit was shut but declined to disclose which unit.

A2 CBOB gasoline differentials climbed 3.00 cents per gallon to a 17.75-cent discount to May RBOB futures, and conventional M2 gasoline rose 3.00 cents per gallon to a 14.75-cent discount to futures, traders said.

Deer Park was the "driver" behind the spike in differentials, a Gulf Coast trader said.

The Deer Park outage came after energy intelligence firm Genscape said on Sunday that Phillips 66 (Hamburg: 18376318.HM - news) had shut an FCCU at its 247,000 bpd Alliance refinery in Belle Chasse, Louisiana.

On Monday Genscape also reported that an FCCU was shut for planned work at Citgo Petroleum's 157,500 bpd refinery in Corpus Christi.

Even (Taiwan OTC: 6436.TWO - news) with the shutdowns, Gulf Coast gasoline stocks remain high. In the week ended April 8, the region's stockpiles were 83.3 million barrels, or 96.5 percent of the 26-year high of 86.3 million barrels reached in January.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration is slated on Wednesday to release stocks as of last Friday. (Reporting By Kristen Hays and Erwin Seba; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)