December's petroleum coke market continues upward: monthly review

ICC News: Domestic petroleum coke market overall maintained upward trend in December, with moderate pressure from supply side and stable performance on demand side.
Prompted by persistent favorable factors, major enterprises' petroleum come market continued to rise for the early half of the month before it started to stabilize in the later half.
Local refinery's market continued the uptrend in December, although operating rate was in decline due to constraints for environmental protection concerns.
On the low-sulphur petroleum coke front, with a pretty good demand for carbon products from steel industry, related carbon enterprises kept a stable purchase of low-sulphur petroleum coke; as medium-sulphur petroleum coke had a sizable rise in price some while ago, low-sulphur petroleum coke started to catch up with the trend this month.
On the medium-sulphur petroleum coke front, operating ratio continue to drop due to constraints for environmental protection concerns; the pace of market growth began to ease in late December.
On the high-sulphur petroleum coke market front, coal market was retreating, the growth of petroleum coke at local refineries and ports was at a slower pace, while high-sulphur petroleum coke market was stabilizing.
As of late 22, prevailing prices of 12#A are 1,250-1,350 yuan/mt; 1#B are 1,200-1,300 yuan/mt; 2#A are 1,140-1,200 yuan/mt from Sinopec and 1,270-1,300 yuan/mt from local refineries; 2#B  are 1,050-1,100 yuan/mt from Sinopec and 1,200-1,230 yuan/mt from local refineries; 3# are 1,000-1,050 yuan/mt from Sinopec and 1,000 yuan/mt from local refineries; 4#-5# are prevailingly 710-860 yuan/mt from Sinopec.
The low-sulphur calcined petroleum coke market was rather quiet. The increase of raw material low-sulphur petroleum coke price has added to the cost of low-sulphur calcined products, although only fractionally.
Middle-and high-sulphur calcined petroleum coke continued to see rise in both output and price. Despite a drop from the peak,  the output of downstream electrolytic aluminium market maintained stable, which continues to give support to calcined products.