SINGAPORE, May 9 (Reuters) - Asia's middle distillates markets recorded a slight slowdown in trading momentum on Friday, although deals on the half-day trading window buoyed discussion levels.

Traders continue to await the emergence of more spot June discussions, though at least two refiners in South Korea and Taiwan are due to start their refinery maintenance programmes at the end of this month.

Refining margins GO10SGCKMc1 barely moved from the past two trading sessions, hovering below $15 a barrel.

On the trading window, deals continued to be brisk for front-month loading cargoes, with 10ppm sulphur gasoil cash differentials GO10-SIN-DIF gaining to a three-session high of 84 cents per barrel, erasing some earlier losses.

The arbitrage spreads for Asian jet fuel to the U.S. west coast markets were barely positive for sellers to engage in east-west trades on this route this week.

Regrade JETREG10SGMc1 widened to the highest for this week, hitting discounts of around 80 cents per barrel as jet fuel markets saw limited market support.

SINGAPORE CASH DEALS O/AS

- Two gasoil deals, no jet fuel deals

INVENTORIES

- Gasoil stocks held independently in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp $(ARA)$ refining and storage hub, which include diesel, were down 0.6% at 2.08 million tons on higher inland demand. ARA/

REFINERY NEWS REF/OUT

- Chevron's CVX.N 269,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery in El Segundo, California, took some units offline earlier this week, energy industry intelligence service Wood Mackenzie said on Thursday.

NEWS

- U.S. container imports surged in April as companies raced to avoid President Donald Trump's tariffs, which now include a 145% duty on goods from China, but executives at the country's two busiest ports said the trend looked set to reverse in May.

- China's April crude oil imports slowed from the previous month but rose 7.5% from a year earlier due to abundant deliveries of sanctioned shipments and as state refiners built stocks during maintenance shutdowns.

- Indonesia plans to change the source of some of its fuel imports from Singapore to the United States as part of negotiations over steep tariffs, its energy minister said on Friday.

- Britain on Friday announced a package of sanctions aimed at Russia, including placing asset freezes on several directors of oil trading company Coral Energy Group, which is now known as 2Rivers Group.

- U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on a third Chinese independent, or "teapot" oil refinery and port terminal operators in China for purchases of Iranian oil ahead of an expected fourth round of U.S.-Iran nuclear talks.

PRICES

(Reporting by Trixie Yap; Editing by Sonia Cheema)

((trixie.yap@thomsonreuters.com;))