A sharp rise in procurement by cement manufacturers is driving India’s demand for petroleum coke, as it registered a 35% month-on-month and 41% year-on-year growth to 1.41 mnt in Jan’22, CoalMint data show.
On a cumulative basis, pet coke consumption, however, declined by 16% y-o-y to 11.4 mnt in Apr’21-Jan’22. However, it still remains lower than the pre-Covid level of 1.86 mnt in Jan’20.
Rise in pet coke demand in Jan came amid a busy season for the cement industries due to the requirement of cement for several infrastructure projects. The pace improved by a decent margin amid the sharp rise in thermal coal prices.
Limited pet coke sales last year had compelled several domestic refineries to offer heavy discounts to capture the domestic market.
The Director-General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has allowed the import of pet coke for only select industries such as cement, lime kiln, calcium carbide and gasification industries.
Further, the annual quota has been fixed for raw petroleum coke at 1.4 mnt for manufacturing calcined petroleum coke and imports of 0.5 mnt of the same by aluminum smelters, thus limiting the overall import quantity.
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