The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) on Friday set the typical sale price of re-gasified liquefied gas (RLNG) at about $13.22 per million British thermal unit for the present month, a rise of two .33 per cent from last month’s $12.91 per unit.
The regulator had last week notified the RLNG sale price at $13.61 for August, about 5.5pc above that of July, including the value of costliest spot cargo at $20.55 per unit (27.87pc of Brent). Pakistan State Oil (PSO) disowned its cargo, saying it had scrapped the bid. As a result, Ogra withdrew its notification each day later and cancelled the sale price.
On Thursday, the PSO reported that it had received a revised bid of $15.93 per unit (22.13pc of Brent) from Qatar Petroleum for a cargo to be delivered on Aug 29-30.
The regulator, therefore, issued a fresh notification and glued the revised average RLNG sale price at $13.22 per unit.
The RLNG sale price in July was about 25pc above June.
Interestingly, Pakistan LNG Limited (PLL) had received a price of $10.69 per unit for nearly an equivalent delivery window (Aug 27-28) because it had held international bidding much before PSO that got almost 49pc higher price even within the second bid. PSO said it had to travel for spot cargo at a brief notice because it had been not required under the annual development plan given by Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) for LNG imports. By the time international price had gone up.
The Ogra notification put the typical import price of 5 term cargos from Qatar at $9.6 per unit compared to $15.93 for one spot cargo that came from Qatar. On the opposite hand, PLL’s one term cargo came in at $8.6 per unit while five other spot cargos ranged between $10.5 and $10.83 per unit. The weighted average sale price of of these 12 cargos thus figured out at $13.22 per unit for August.
The distribution of RLNG tariff is figured out on the idea of LNG-delivered ex-ship (DES), besides variety of other additional charges claimed by public sector companies and terminal operators.
Ogra said that PLL’s DES prices averaged $10.5 per unit but increased to $13.22 due to these additions. The DES price has increased by almost 35pc since April this year when it had been slightly above $7 per unit owing higher international market rate.
Besides the DES price, PSO and PLL are also charging 0.6pc and 0.5pc, respectively, as retainage, while gas companies — SSGCL and SNGPL — are charging transmission and distribution losses of about 6.7pc. additionally , PSO and PLL also are charging 2.50pc of DES price as margin on import of LNG, quite 6pc of other import-related costs of PSO and PLL and terminal charges of about 41 cents per unit for Engro and about 39 cents of Pakistan Gasport.
