Coal news and updates

Reliance keeps pet coke prices unchanged for Dec loading

December 5: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), India’s largest petroleum coke maker, has kept the price for its fuel grade petroleum coke for loading in December unchanged at Rs 6,500 per ton ex-refinery, an industry source said.

The company had increased the price for November loading by Rs 200 per ton.

“There were no major change in the prices of fuel grade petroleum coke in the international markets and the demand supply situation in the country also remains largely unchanged. These might have prompted the company to roll over prices,” the source said.

The price of high sulphur pet coke in international markets continued to move around $58-60 per ton FOB US Gulf Coast and with freight of around $45 per ton, the CFR India price is almost unchanged at about $104-105 per ton.

RIL had kept October loading prices unchanged after increasing the same by Rs 300 per ton for September loading to Rs 6,300 per ton. Earlier, it had increased the price by Rs 100 per ton in July from Rs 5,900 per ton.

In July and September this year, the company had increased the prices to offset the impact of the depreciation in the Indian currency versus the US dollar.

Though information from other refiners like Essar, HPCL and BORL who generally follow RIL in fixing their pet coke price, was not available, they are also likely to follow the leader, sources feel.

“At present, there is demand for pet coke in India, particularly for material of domestic origin, but it cannot be said that demand has gone up significantly,” a refinery official said.

RIL had increased prices of its pet coke by Rs 600 per ton between March-November, 2013 from a low of Rs 5,700 per ton in February.

Earlier, between December 2012 and February 2013, Indian refiners had rolled over the prices before resorting to an increase in March-April, 2013. They had cut prices by Rs 400 and Rs 150 per ton in November 2012 and October 2012 respectively.