Indian Petcoke Supply Increases on MRPL Restarting Idled Coker; Domestic Prices Stable

Petcoke supply has increased in the Indian market as Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL) restarted its coker operations after a shut-down over water-supply issues.

The incremental supply has come at a time when demand got stronger in the home markets due to unavailability prevailing in the key international markets. MRPL has priced its Petcoke at INR 4,859/MT (ex-works), as learnt from a reliable source.

Import offers from key international regions are high on account of unavailability. Import offers of Petcoke (6.5% Sulphur) from Saudi Arabia are assessed at around USD 62/MT CFR India; and import offers of the material (6.5% Sulphur) from USA are assessed at around USD 69/MT CFR India.

Materials booked against these offers will be shipped by end Aug’16/early Sept’16, according to an importer.

In what could be regarded as good news for Indian end-users, import availability of Petcoke is likely to increase substantially in the near future as suppliers in Venezuela are learnt to be eyeing the Indian market for exporting the material.

In the meantime, Indian producers have maintained their ex-works prices at the rates revised on 1 Jun’16.

It may be recalled that on 1Jun’16, Reliance Industries Limited, the largest producer in the country, had revised its ex-works price by INR 300/MT to INR 4,950/MT; and, Essar, the country’s second largest producers also had hiked its ex-works price by the same amount to INR 4,940/MT.

Source: Market Participants 

IMPORTS

During the first half of Jun’16, a moderate quantity of 616,000 MT of Petcoke landed at Indian ports, according to data compiled by SteelMint Research. Unavailability in international markets has resulted in import quantities going lower. The top importers during the period are: Zuari Cement, Ambuja Cement, Ultratech Cement, Shree Cement, among others.

FORECAST

In the next week, Indian producers are not likely to change their ex-work prices, an assessment of the prevailing market conditions indicates. Demand will continue to prevail as strong.