Qatar LNG Continues Haunting Pakistan’s Energy Sector
By Salman Khan
Islamabad: LNG supplies from Qatar continue haunting the refining sector as the Attock Refinery Limited (ARL) has decided to close its main crude distillation unit till June 1, 2025.
This is serious issue that has a severe impact not only on ARL that is a taker of local crude oil but it is going to hit cash flows of the oil and gas exploration companies like Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL).
OGDCL has already set up its storage to mitigate the crisis of forced curtailment of oil and gas.OGRA Increases LNG Prices
The PML-N government had signed agreement of LNG with Qatar without conducting due diligence about the demand of gas in Pakistan.
It had signed agreements in a haste that had started bleeding energy sector in form of circular debt.
The private sector has also been struggling to import LNG but the bureaucratic and political hurdles did not allow this to happen.
Now, the prices of LNG were also high and therefore private sector was also shy of importing LNG.
Pakistan has two LNG terminal but one of them has been running on partial capacity due to mismanagement and mishandling issue of LNG.
ARL in a notice issue to Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSE) informed that ARL has shut down its main crude distillation unit (32,400 BPSD capacity) in wake of witnessing very low crude stocks.
It further informed that the unit would be shut down till June 01, 2025. It said that SNGPL had witnessed high pressure on its system that resulted in forced curtailment of gas production from local oilfields. This has also been a reason to halt supply from the oilfields.
