Turkmenistan’s biggest oil refinery Turkmenbashy has sold 30.000 Mt of green petroleum coke on 19 February, price for the lot has increased 173 USD per MT or more than 3 times from the previous tender, Legion Oil & Gas LLC data shows.
During the tender record-high 17 companies were competing for the lot, instantly push price to its highest level in many years. Prices for Turkmenbashy petroleum coke were largely stable during 2014-2017. Current price increase follows global trend in low-sulphur petroleum coke market started in 2017 as demand for the product from aluminum and metallurgical industries are growing,
“We have seen significant price increase for graphitized electrodes in 2017. Turkmen petcoke is an alternative to needle petcoke in current market conditions and also a good option for aluminum smelters to optimize their costs by blending with cheap high sulfur petcoke” – says Yury Burenko petcoke trading director at Legion Oil & Gas LLC.
Yesterday’s tender was the first petcoke offer in the last 7 months.
The whole 30’000 tons cargo was sold to a single buyer on FCA refinery basis for rail road export for 6 months loading period.
CPC demand surprisingly low
Turkmenbashy also offered 10’000 tons of calcined petroleum coke, which was not sold on 19th February tender. Buyers were offering lower prices for calcined petroleum coke compared to green coke which is unique situation: before calcined petroleum coke was traded with approximately 100 USD per MT premium to green petroleum coke, reflecting higher production costs of calcined material.
Quality issues with calcined coke might have been a reason for low demand for the product, industry players suggest. Turkmenbashy CPC has low real density compared to what other producers offers.
Turkmenbashy refinery produces petroleum coke with Sulphur content 0.6% Max and very low metals content, its coker unit capacity is 180’000 Mt per year. Key markets for Turkmen petcoke were usually Tajikistan and Russia but starting from 2017 significant volumes of the product are being shipped to China by rail.
Legion Oil & Gas LLC specializes on petcoke sourcing from refineries located in former USSR countries – Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Contact us with your enquiries using our contact form or by email.
