As we reach December 2024, the petroleum coke market remains affected by a mix of global supply and demand imbalances, regulatory changes, and economic conditions. This analysis provides an overview of the current pricing trends, breaking down the factors influencing the market and offering a forward-looking perspective on what to expect in the final month of the year.
Overview of Petroleum Coke
Looking at the entire market, petroleum coke price has rebounded recently. And the prospect is relative optimistic.
Concretely speaking:
In the first half of November 2024, price of petroleum coke still keeps rising. However, some refineries were not doing well, even though the good economic condition.
From the type to view, supply of low sulphur petroleum coke is tight. And downstream enterprises broke the peace gradually to procure raw material. It is conducive for supporting the price. As for medium and high sulphur petroleum coke, most of enterprises purchased according to their orders and petroleum coke demand still performs stably. It supported the petroleum coke price weakly.
What’s more, most of refineries adjusted price, in order to adapt to the market rhythm. Average price of petroleum coke is 250 USD/MT approximately. The reason why it increased slightly is exchange rate.
2024 US Presidential Election has held at the beginning of November. As we all know, the final result is Donald Trump won this election. It caused exchange rate between USD and CNY rose slightly. Therefore, US Presidential Election indirectly made the price of petroleum coke fluctuate slightly.
Overall, petroleum coke price is increased by 1.6% approximately at the beginning of November, compared with the last several weeks.
In the second half of November 2024, petroleum coke traded warmly. Concurrently, it maintained the previous trend, that is increasing.
Under the background of rising, whether it is low sulphur, medium sulphur or high sulphur petroleum coke, prices were climbed consecutively.
During this period, some local government introduced some relevant policies to limit the fuel coke use. Due to this policy, some refineries have to use this kind of coke by themselves. It impinged on petroleum coke price more or less.
Compared with sluggish demand in the first half of November, downstream enterprises had a stronger purchasing enthusiasm. It resulted in the growth of demand, thereby, it pushed the petroleum coke price climb.
Generally speaking, average price of petroleum coke broke through 250 USD/MT and reached about 252 USD/MT. Of course, it is also affected by exchange rate between USD and CNY, otherwise, it rose drastically.
Fig.1 Average Price
Fig.2 Forecast Price
Trend for Petroleum Coke Price
When it comes to the trend in the future, we can analyze it from the following points:
To begin with, according to insiders’ words and the information we have, with the resumption production, it is possible for supply of domestic petroleum coke to have a slight increment at the beginning of December 2024, meanwhile, it is conducive to support the price of petroleum coke. For imported coke, it will be traded warmly, as downstream enterprises procure the raw material.
In addition, looking at downstream enterprises, as entering the end of 2024, most of them are prudent and procure depending on their orders. Furthermore, steel industry enters the conventional off-season, almost all steel mills began to reduce production. Thus, it is limited for demand of raw materials. And this situation will keep in a long term and there will not be much change in the short term at least.
Last but not least, from now on, there is no obvious beneficial factor to support the price severely at the beginning of December, whether it is anode material field, graphite electrode field or carbon industry.
Based on our above analysis, we expect prices to fluctuate within a certain range. And it will not change drastically in December 2024. As the above figure shown, you can see clearly that the price of different petroleum coke we estimated.
