Biomass is used as a co-feed for a heavy petroleum oil coking process to improve the operation of the coking process and to utilize biomaterial for the production of transportation fuels. The coking process may be a delayed coking process or a fluidized bed coking process and in each case, the presence of the biomass will decrease the coke drying time so reducing coke handling problems in the unit besides forming a superior coke product. In the case of a fluidized bed coking process using a gasifier for the coke, the addition of an alkali metal salt improves the operation of the gasifier.