A shipment of petroleum coke from Motiva's 640,500 b/d Port Arthur refinery travelled to Florida-based utility JEA on a Panama-flagged vessel last month, taking advantage of the recent US Jones Act waiver.
The Handysize Japanese-built T Clever on 14 April shipped petroleum coke from the Pabtex terminal in Port Arthur, Texas, discharging in Jacksonville, Florida, on 22 April, according to data from ship tracking service Kpler.
JEA had contracted with Aramco Trading and Holcim Trading for its 2026 supply, with the option to load coke from Mexican state-owned Pemex's 340,000 b/d Olmeca refinery at Dos Bocas or other refineries from January-August 2026. Following US president Donald Trump's 60-day Jones Act waiver in March, Aramco began supplying JEA with coke from Port Arthur, sources said.
The Jones Act requires shipments of energy-related products between US ports to be on vessels that are US-built, flagged and crewed. But these vessels are limited and expensive. Trump waived the act in an attempt to ease commodity prices that spiked after the start of the Middle East war, making shipments from US Gulf ports less costly.
The Jones Act normally makes imported coke from Latin America a less expensive option for US buyers like JEA. JEA had historically been a buyer of Venezuelan coke, prior to the US sanctioning the state-owned oil company PdV in 2019, and it had also secured coke from Colombian state-owned Ecopetrol's 200,000 b/d Reficar refinery in Cartagena, despite this low-sulphur coke commanding a premium in China. But as Mexican high-sulphur coke supply rose at the end of last year with the ramp-up of the Olmeca refinery, this refinery became an attractive option.
JEA received three shipments totalling 102,000t from Dos Bocas across January, February and March, Kpler data show. US Energy Information Administration fuel receipts data, which is only available through February, show the utility received 65,478t from Holcim Trading and Shipping.
But Mexican loadings were significantly delayed in the early part of this year, as foggy and rainy weather disrupted loadings from Dos Bocas. Dos Bocas has also only restarted at partial capacity recently after an April fire that damaged one of the towers of its coking unit, a market participant said, which could further impact Mexican supply availability for JEA.
The Trump administration on 24 April extended the Jones Act waiver for another 90 days, meaning JEA and other US buyers could potentially receive more US Gulf supply at competitive freight costs.
The T Clever on 29 April loaded another 35,742t of petroleum coke at the Corpus Christi Bulk Terminal, in Texas, which also loads Motiva Port Arthur coke, but the destination was so far only listed as Northern America, according to Kpler.
