Pet Coke: IndianOil receives overwhelming response in outside state auction

Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOC) has conducted online auction of RPC (Raw Petroleum Coke) from its Assam-based Bongaigaon refinery on 22^nd Oct’20 for outside state consumers.

Results of the auctions are enumerated as follows:

The delivery period for this outside state e-auction is for 45 days after auction from 23^rd Oct’20 to 6^th Dec’20.

The response in this outside state auction was unprecedentedly overwhelming as the entire stock was sold out. Contrastingly, in the previous round of intrastate auction conducted on 20^th Oct’20, not a single bid was received and the entire offered quantity remained unsold. The market participants cited the reason for non-participation as high reserve price at INR 17,140/t.

Nevertheless, the responses from outside state consumers were quite opposite and apart from the entire quantity being sold, these consumers also increased their bids by over INR 1,000/t to get their quantity allocated. Possibly, this is the first time such situation has arisen, where no quantity was sold in intrastate auction but the entire quantity was sold out in outside state auction at premium.

The above response is being attributed to increase of RPC price in the international market coupled with its tight availability. This is mainly due to lower production of RPC by the refineries amid the present pandemic, which has reduced the demand of other fuels leading to lower capacity utilizations of refineries.

Considering both the completed rounds of auctions, including intrastate and outside state, the result is summarized as follows:

It may be noted that while the reserve price and bid price were same at Guwahati at INR 16,740/t, the reserve price at Bongaigaon was INR 17,140/t and highest bid price was INR 18,200/t.

The reserve price was increased over last round of auction as follows: