According to a recent report, Indian companies are importing significant volumes of petroleum coke from Venezuela for the first time, as the OPEC nation boosts exports not specifically targeted by U.S. sanctions.
Key highlights
- India’s growing appetite for Venezuela’s petcoke is being driven by a scramble for inexpensive fuel to power industries as global coal prices have surged.
- India, which counts the United States and Saudi Arabia as major petcoke suppliers, received its first ever cargo from Venezuela in the beginning of 2022.
- Venezuelan petcoke is being offered at discounts of 5-10 per cent to petcoke from the United States.
- A tonne of petcoke is more expensive than coal, but produces more energy when burnt.
- It is generally not used as fuel because of toxic emissions, but is widely used by the cement industry – its largest consumer, as sulphur dioxide emissions are absorbed by limestone.
What is Petcoke?
- Petcoke is a byproduct created when bitumen found in tar sands, is refined into crude oil. Bitumen contains a higher number of carbon atoms than regular oil and it’s these atoms, extracted from large hydrocarbon molecules using heat, that go on to form petcoke.
- Petcoke is an extremely stable fuel which means there is little risk of combustion during transportation, but due to its high carbon content when it does combust it releases up to 10% more CO2 per unit of energy that normal coal.
- That’s higher than almost any other energy source in existence and makes petcoke a huge contributor to the creation of greenhouse gases.
- It’s not just carbon that makes petcoke an environmental concern. Increased pollution controls are required during petcoke combustion to capture the excess sulphur found in low grade petcoke.
- The heavy metal content of petcoke has also left many worried, both at the effects of releasing it into the air when petcoke is burned, and the implications it has for the local environment during storage High grade petcoke which is low in sulphur and heavy metals can be used to make electrodes for the steel and aluminum industry.
- But the majority of petcoke manufactured globally, approximately 75-80%, is of a much lower grade, containing higher levels of sulphur and heavy metals and is used solely as fuel.
