Indian Oil makes rare offer of jet fuel for March export
NEW DELHI/SINGAPORE (Reuters) -- Indian Oil Corp may regularly export jet fuel from its 300,000 bpd Paradip refinery as the country's kerosene demand eases with the government's push to use of cooking gas.
India has halted imports of kerosene since July 2015. The government has been promoting the use of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) by providing free connections to rural households.
Refiners adjust jet fuel and kerosene production depending on local demand. But jet fuel has more specifications than kerosene such as the smoke point, flash point, freeze point and cloud point.
"Kerosene demand is coming down so we will produce aviation fuel and a small quantity of kerosene to meet market demand," said an IOC official, who is not authorized to speak to media.
Paradip refinery on the east coast has offered up to 32,000 t of aviation jet fuel for loading from Paradip in March in an unusual move, a tender document showed on Wednesday.
He said the latest tender was an ad hoc export and from April IOC may offer at least 15,000 t of aviation fuel every month for export. IOC has offered two cargoes of 15,000 to 16,000 t each of jet fuel for loading from Paradip's south oil jetty over March 13 to 14 and March 24 to 25.
Indian Oil usually sells the jet fuel it produces from its refineries within India.
Reporting by Nidhi Verma in NEW DELHI and Jessica Jaganathan in Singapore, editing by David Evans
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