JEA late Tuesday awarded tenders for six cargoes totaling 210,000 st of delayed green petcoke for delivery to its Northside Generating Station, the Florida utility's fuel buyer said Wednesday.
Two of those 35,000 st plus or minus 10% cargoes were awarded on a fixed price to IMI Fuels for delivery in July and August and will be delivered from a mix of Venezuelan terminals, said Mike Crosse, the company's fuel buyer.
The two cargoes will each have guaranteed maximum 4.2% sulfur, 14,500 Btu/lb and 50 Hardgrove Grindability Index (HGI), Crosse said. "In the second quarter, things have been tight," he said. "There were a lot of bids based on index pricing, but they gave us some fixed pricing and we jumped on that."
The other four cargoes were awarded based on an index price to Komsa Sarl, the Switzerland-based affiliate of Koch Carbon. Komsa Sarl will deliver three cargoes from the US Gulf Coast, most likely from the New Orleans area, Crosse said.
The three cargoes will have 6% sulfur, HGI of 31 and 14,000 Btu/lb, he said. "They're guaranteeing 6% sulfur -- that's all I'm worried about," he added.
The other cargo will be delivered by Komsa Sarl from the Reficar refinery in Cartegena, Colombia.
The September-delivered cargo will have 3.5% sulfur, 14,000 Btu/lb and HGI of 43, Crosse said.
It will be the first delivered cargo from the Reficar refinery, which was expanded this year and is expected to produce 900,000 mt of petcoke annually.
More petcoke is expected to start coming out of the refinery, which delivered its first cargo earlier this month, but time will tell if the refinery continues to deliver petcoke with less than 4% sulfur, Crosse said.
If it maintains less than 4% sulfur, the petcoke will likely find its way into a premium market, he said.
"We like the lower sulfur, but we don't want to pay a premium for it," Crosse said.
