Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOC), the country’s second-largest petroleum coke producer, has now restarted production at its Paradip refinery in Odisha.
Notably, the DCU (Delayed Coker Unit) of IOC’s largest refinery at Paradip had been undergoing maintenance shutdown since 25 Jul’20.
It normally takes few days’ time to start pet coke dispatches, as the daily production gets stored in the yard. This helps in smooth operation for dispatching the supplies by road as well as by rail.
There was no production of pet coke for almost 25 days at Paradip. Considering the refinery’s monthly production of 110 kilotons (kt), it is expected that total availability of pet coke was reduced by 75-80 kt during this period.
As the ready stock of pet coke at the time of commencing shutdown was even less than 10 kt, many customers are running at low stock levels. These customers have been eagerly waiting to begin procurement of pet coke. Therefore, the demand is anticipated to be quite high initially, and it will take some time for it to normalize.
Market participants expect that as the pet coke demand at Paradip will remain high for coming weeks, it may send the commodity’s prices upward again in the next month, as the price revision is due in this week.
In the month of August, the price was increased at Paradip by INR 1500/t, while increase by Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) was merely by INR 520/t. This is apart from the firming of pet coke prices in the international market during the current month.
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