MOSCOW (MRC) -- India’s Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) has sold a naphtha cargo out of Kochi for the first time this year after cancelling two earlier sales tenders, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing with reference to industry sources.
BPCL sold 35,000 tonnes of naphtha for May 2-3 loading from Kochi to Japanese trader Petro-Diamond at a premium of about USD16 a tonne to its own price formula on a free-on-board (FOB) basis.
It skipped exporting the fuel from Kochi for January and April 2019 loading and cancelled sales tenders for February and March cargoes.
BPCL also exports naphtha from Mumbai.
Indian naphtha exports have been low this year due to domestic demand and India’s refineries either undertaking maintenance or upgrading their facilties to prepare for Euro VI-compliant fuels.
India’s February 2019 naphtha exports came in at 430,000 tonnes, according to official data, the lowest monthly exports since October 2015.
As MRC reported earlier, BPCL plans to build a USD3 billion petrochemical unit to serve the Mumbai region, a company official said in March 2018, to profit from the country's expected surge in demand for petrochemicals as its economy expands. BPCL's expansion is part of a national plan to spend USD35 billion on petrochemical production in order to meet the expected increase in consumption of the chemicals for products including plastics, paints and adhesives. India currently only produces about 20 million tonnes a year of petrochemicals, less than the 40 million tonnes of demand expected for the 2017/18 financial year.
MRC