India’s petroleum (pet) coke production by domestic oil companies has been consistently increasing alongside the production of all other petroleum products.
Over the past decade, it has been observed that the aggregate production of all petroleum goods has grown to 262.9 million tonnes (mn t) in FY’21, as against 196.2 mn t in FY’11, which translates to a moderate growth of 3.4% per year.
Meanwhile, the production of pet coke has grown remarkably to 14.6 mn t in FY’21 from 2.8 mn t during FY’11, which shows an outstanding growth of 421% over the decade, or a growth of 42.1% per year.
Due to this high growth in production of pet coke, its share among all petroleum products has increased sharply. From a very low market share of 1.4% in FY’11, it has increased to 5.6% in FY’21.
Product-wise petroleum production figures are given below:
| Products | Jul’21 | Jul’20 | Change (%) | Apr-Jul’21 | Apr-Jul’20 | Change (%) |
| LPG | 1.01 | 0.96 | 4.6 | 2.05 | 1.92 | 6.9 |
| Naphtha | 1.60 | 1.41 | 13.6 | 3.27 | 2.95 | 10.9 |
| MS Total | 3.15 | 2.37 | 33.2 | 6.37 | 4.45 | 43.4 |
| ATF | 0.75 | 0.37 | 101.8 | 1.54 | 0.89 | 71.6 |
| SKO | 0.17 | 0.18 | -7.7 | 0.32 | 0.38 | -17.2 |
| HSD Total | 8.34 | 7.38 | 13.0 | 17.11 | 14.00 | 22.2 |
| LDO | 0.06 | 0.03 | 122.1 | 0.13 | 0.07 | 75.3 |
| Lubes | 0.08 | 0.06 | 30.6 | 0.16 | 0.11 | 50.8 |
| FO | 0.63 | 0.75 | -16.1 | 1.12 | 1.49 | -24.8 |
| LSHS | 0.03 | 0.03 | 24.0 | 0.07 | 0.05 | 34.6 |
| Bitumen | 0.37 | 0.35 | 4.6 | 0.89 | 0.43 | 106.5 |
| RPC/Petcoke | 1.03 | 0.98 | 4.9 | 2.16 | 2.00 | 8.1 |
| Others | 2.70 | 2.40 | 12.5 | 5.64 | 4.51 | 25.1 |
| Total | 19.93 | 17.28 | 15.3 | 40.82 | 33.24 | 22.8 |
(Source: Govt.data)
Production growth of pet coke augmented due to commissioning of new refineries
The production of all petroleum products as compared to percentage share of pet coke production is represented graphically from FY’11-21. The production data includes both fuel and anode grades of pet coke, while sales also include calcined petroleum coke (CPC) besides raw pet coke.
The chart clearly indicates that the production growth of pet coke has been much higher as compared to the growth in overall production of other petroleum products. This is mainly due to commissioning of new refineries with delayed coker units (DCU) to increase the production of light and middle distillates by processing heavy residue, which yield light pet coke as a byproduct.
New refineries that were commissioned during the past decade include Nayara Energy (erstwhile Essar Oil), HPCL-Mittal Energy Limited (HMEL)’s Guru Gobind Singh Petroleum Refinery at Bhatinda in Punjab, Bharat Oman Refinery Limited (BORL)’s Bina Refinery in Madhya Pradesh, Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) in Assam and IndianOil’s Paradip Refinery in Odisha.
Besides these new refineries, some of the existing refineries also commissioned DCUs to increase the light and middle distillates. These include IOC Koyali, BPCL Kochi, MRPL Mangalore and CPCL Chennai.
All these refineries have jointly contributed towards the increase in production of pet coke over the period under analysis. The major surge was during 2010 to 2013, after which the production growth has moderated.
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