BPCL resumes spot naphtha exports from Kochi
BPCL resumes spot naphtha exports from Kochi
Singapore: Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) is resuming spot naphtha exports from its Kochi refinery for the first time this year, as it has completed expanding the refinery, traders said on Friday.
The state-owned company is offering 27,000 tonnes of low aromatic naphtha for 20-30 October lifting from Kochi port in a tender which closes on 16 September.
BPCL had shut a 60,000-barrels-per-day (bpd) crude distillation unit (CDU) unit at its Kochi refinery in early April for maintenance and expansion works.
This would raise the CDU nameplate capacity to 100,000 bpd, but the unit failed to resume operations as expected in May.
The expansion work was only completed on 5 August, where the total refinery nameplate capacity was boosted to 190,000 bpd.
BPCL last sold 27,000 tonnes of naphtha from the Kochi refinery around last November.
The state-owned company is resuming spot exports at a time when Asian demand for the petrochemical feestock is strong.
The firm demand has kept the crack spreads—premiums/losses obtained from refining Brent crude into naphtha—at above $100.00 a tonne for more than two weeks.
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