Entering the third month of 2024, the petroleum coke market maintains its dynamic nature, with prices fluctuating in response to various market factors. This analysis provides a concise overview of the current pricing trends and their underlying drivers.
Petroleum Coke Market Overview
We can see clearly that the whole petroleum coke market traded moderately in March 2024. As reducing of supply, petroleum coke price has been risen recently. It is beneficial for price to rise, due to weak purchasing enthusiasm in downstream enterprises. In addition, imported petroleum coke resource hit price for domestic market excessively. These factors pushed petroleum coke price climb comprehensively. These are the reasons why the price rose slightly. Tendency chart for average price is shown below.
Fig. 1 Tendency chart of petroleum coke price during March 2024
Fig. 2 Forecast of petcoke price in April 2024
Forecast Petroleum Coke Price
From supply aspect, outlook for domestic petroleum coke is not optimistic, maybe some calcined equipment stop working temporarily in April 2024. While, for imported petroleum coke, it is more optimistic than domestic. Enterprises trade stably due to sufficient supply for sponge coke. It is possible for inventory at port to decrease continuously.
From demand aspect, outlook is not clear yet. On one hand, trading picks up gradually in anode material market, quantities of enquiry and order have a slight increment, there is some support for the price. On the other hand, demand in graphite electrode market still stays depressing, purchasing enthusiasm is weaker than anode material market. However, overall, market picks up slightly. Thus, in summary, we anticipate petcoke market in April will be stronger slightly than March, even in the context of current global economic recession.
In conclusion, although downstream market still waits to recover, some enterprises also procure petroleum coke for their rigid demand. Besides, market turmoil and other factors. These will affect petroleum coke market more or less. Considering comprehensively, we forecast price for petroleum coke will be climb, including, for low sulphur petroleum coke, it will be 334 – 471 USD/MT approximately; for medium sulphur(about 3%), its price will not be higher than 257 USD/MT; as for high sulphur, generally speaking, its price is lower than other petcoke we mentioned above and it will be 156 – 192 USD/MT at April 2024.
