Tawanai

Pakistan State Oil (PSO), the country’s leading oil marketing company, has posted Rs 5.083 billion as profit after tax in the half year period ended December 31, 2009 as compared to after tax loss of Rs 10.049 billion recorded in the corresponding period in 2008.

Highlights

• Overall, the market share for PSO stood at 71.4 percent during the first half of FY10.
• Despite financial challenges and economic slow down, PSO maintained its leadership in the White and Black Oil market segments with market shares of 56.3 percent and 88.5 percent respectively.
• The reporting period witnessed the transference of 12 percent of the government of Pakistan’s shareholding to the employees of PSO.
• During the first half of FY10, the company signed a Fuel Supply Agreement with Northern Power Generation Company Limited (NPGCL), a subsidiary company of the Pakistan Electric Power Company (Private) Limited (PEPCO), for exclusively fulfilling Furnace Oil and HSD requirements of all the power stations of NPGCL.

Oil, Pakistan financial results, Pakistan State Oil (PSO), PSO

Via Pakistan Times

Amid typical pretext that over the past few months Pakistan did not pass on the oil price-hike to the populous – despite burden of almost over Rs.125 billion – a drastic increase in the price-index of petroleum products has eventually hit the masses, the ultimate impact of anguish and agony shall fall on those who fall in the category of ‘have-nots’.

As a matter of fact, the increase of 5 to 9 per cent in POL prices has come as a big shock, which will have hefty negative impact on the inflation stricken masses and the fragile economy.

As we understand, industrialists, exporters and traders are of the opinion that there was no valid justification to increase the petroleum prices as international prices are still below $ 80 per barrel and the decision would be detrimental to local industry, especially to the exporters.

Many prominent economists say that this action is expected to increase inflation. The unprecedented increase in the prices of petroleum products has already put the industry at a disadvantage where consumers matter.

It would create a bigger financial crunch, increase economic difficulties, be it the business community, agriculture sector or the general public. Public transport vehicle owners and business community, besides the people from various walks of life, have already started protesting against the hike.

Prices of consumer items, electricity tariff and transport fares would go up substantially due to this increase. Industrialists are already facing plentiful problems because of electricity and gas shortage coupled with high mark-up and it would be difficult for the industry to absorb the new shock.

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Energy, Oil

The Oil & Gas Pakistan Forum 2010 with special emphasis on “Solutions for Sustainability – Pursuit for Steadier Markets” concluded in Islamabad today with speakers providing perceptive insight. Experts stressed on the need to capitalize on the enhanced stability in the global Oil & Gas business, pledging a realignment of policies for a robust future and a collective strategy to recover from the setbacks of the previous years and the need for technology as a driver for future oil and gas initiatives.

More than 300 delegates from government, regulatory bodies, prominent oil & gas companies, stakeholders, members of the Diplomatic Corps and media attended the day-long conference supported by the Petroleum Ministry, MOL Pakistan, Eastern Testing Services and other partners.

The Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources, Syed Naveed Qamar delivered the Keynote Address, in which he highlighted the most attractive features of the liberal Petroleum Policy and urged the local and foreign E&P companies to proactively enhance their activities and investments in Pakistan for higher productivity. He assured the forum of his complete support and the government’s resolve to protect their interests. Mr. Mehmood Saleem Mehmood, Secretary Petroleum was also present.

Mr. Janos Feher, Chairman, Pakistan Petroleum Exploration & Production Companies Association (PPEPCA) stressed the need for a collection strategy to achieve sustainability and build a steadier, safer and productive market for the oil and gas sector in Pakistan.

Mr. Menin Rodrigues, Chairman of the Conference & CEO of SHAMROCK Communications (Pvt.) Limited in his opening remarks appreciated the efforts of the sector specialists and emphasized the emerging opportunities and challenges in this evident phase of stabilization in this industry across the globe.

Well researched Papers were presented in the various sessions to discuss critical topics including; Regulatory Framework, Incentives, Opportunities, E & P Infrastructure, Business models, Geopolitical Issues; Depleting Reserves, Alternate Energy and Impact of Prices on Economies and an outlook of global perspective. The sessions were chaired by distinguished personalities like; Mr. Saquib Mohiuddin, CEO, Business Support Fund, Ministry of Finance; Mr. Tauqir Sadiq, Chairman-OGRA and Mr. Rune Stroem, Country Director-Asian Development Bank.

The eminent speakers included Janos Feher, Chairman, Pakistan Petroleum Exploration & Production Companies Association (PPEPCA), Dr. Shahab Alam, Director-Petroleum Ministry; Tashfeen Qayyum, CEO, Eastern Testing; Shahrukh Kiyani, Manager Projects, Mari Gas Company Ltd., Sohail Kiani, President-SARF Canada, N.A. Zuberi, Executive Director, Private Power Board; Abbas Bilgrami, Managing Director, Progas and Samir Ahmed, Managing Director, National Commodities Exchange Limited (NCEL).

Mr. Rune Stroem, Country Director Asian Development Bank, gave an indepth overview of the global and regional oil and gas sector opportunities against the backdrop of economic conditions in the respective areas. He said, “Pakistan’s energy issue was a financial issue”. Concluding the conference Dr. Gulfaraz Ahmed, Former Secretary Petroleum eloquently stressed a restructuring of the energy infrastructure with the involvement of professional talent and to harness the country’s vast reserves of natural gas. The conference ended with a vote of thanks and appreciation to the organizers for a well-managed conference

Gas, Oil, Pakistan, Petrol

India’s state-run oil and gas companies plan to raise their total investment by about a fifth in the next financial year to raise crude output, expand refineries and produce cleaner fuels, a senior government official said Friday.

The companies are likely to end the current fiscal year through March with a total investment of 580.95 billion rupees and plan to spend 694.58 billion rupees ($15 billion) next year, the official, who didn’t wish to be identified, told Dow Jones Newswires.

Indian energy companies are increasing investment to meet rising demand for fuels in the world’s second-fastest growing major economy. India’s top policy think tank, the Planning Commission, has forecast the economy to grow at 9% between April 2007 and March 2012.

The federal government aims to raise spending in the sector to assure energy security through higher local output and investment in oil equity abroad. The South Asian nation currently imports more than three-fourths of its crude oil needs.

Oil & Natural Gas Corp., India’s largest explorer, is likely to raise capital expenditure next year by about 7% to 265.23 billion rupees as it speeds up drilling at exploratory blocks, including the Cauvery and western offshore basins, the official said.

ONGC–which contributed about three quarters of India’s crude oil output and two-thirds of natural gas production in the last fiscal year–hasn’t kept up with output targets as its fields are ageing and it hasn’t brought any new blocks into production for many years.

Energy, Investment, Oil

Shamrock is organizing a conference for Oil and Gas industry in Pakistan. For more details, please visit Shamrock Conferences web site

Events, Gas, Oil, Pakistan

Crude Oil and Silver Futures contracts were successfully executed at National Commodity Exchange Limited (NCEL), Pakistan’s only regulated and technologically advanced platform. The newly introduced commodities are attracting volumes with Crude Oil 100 barrel futures contract amounting to US $ 615,952 (PKR 52 million) and Silver 500 ounce futures contract observing trades worth US $ 72,911 (PKR 6 Million) during the last week.

Mr. Samir Ahmed, Managing Director NCEL said “These international, US Dollar-denominated contracts now allow direct linkages to the international markets eliminating the exchange rate risk and allowing investors a pure play on commodity price itself. The contracts will add further depth and liquidity to the NCEL platform and create opportunities for new trading and advanced hedging strategies. The listing of these contracts marks an important milestone in this phase of growth for NCEL”.

NCEL is a gateway to an electronically transacted marketplace, with trading, central party clearing and settlement facility; where customers continue to rely on liquidity, price transparency and ensured settlement. The exchange is a reliable and secure platform boasting increased retail and institutional investor demand for over the counter trades and mitigating the risks of counterparty default. This provides effective hedging tools for trade, industry and other market participants who may be exposed to energy and precious metal price risks.

According to Ms. Raheela Khan, Senior Manager at NCEL, the exchange is currently providing trade facilitates in Gold, Silver, Crude Oil, IRRI-6 Rice, Palm Oil and Interest Rate Futures. “During 2009, total rupee traded volume touched 28,029,469,905 with a total of 86,883 contracts reflecting a year- over- year growth of 4485%” informed Raheela. She further pointed, Dec 09 was an exceptional month with a 5.3 billion rupees monthly volume, setting a daily average traded value of 300million rupees and marked the highest ever day trade volume record of 1.29 billion rupee. NCEL volume growth has been phenomenal in 2009 breaching ISE and nearing LSE volumes, however, volumes were mostly concentrated in gold.

In 2010, these volumes are to grow substantially with growing institutional investors and several agricultural, metals, and financial futures contracts to be listed. These new electronically-traded contracts are offered continuously for 20 hours a day from 10am to 6am, five days a week. NCEL is Pakistan’s first and only demutualised exchange with a 100% institutional shareholding. It has 290 members spread all over Pakistan.

Fore more details visit: www.ncel.com.pk or call 111-623-623

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Oil, Pakistan, Petrol

Oil and Gas Development Company Ltd (OGDCL), Pakistan’s biggest upstream oil and gas exploration company, has big ambitions to go global and invest in ventures around the globe. OGDCL has approached various international companies. Pakistan press has reported that OGDCL has been working to create an accord with Chinese companies China National Petrochemical Company and SINOPEC to explore new investment opportunities in North Africa, Far East and other smaller Arab countries. Interesting that while Pakistan continues to suffer energy problems, giants like OGDCL are planning these deals.

OGDCL forwarded the summary for the proposed joint ventures with Chinese companies to the Ministry of Petroleum, The summary has highlighted that the Chinese companies lack international exposure and modern expertise, which has prevented them from venturing into the overseas exploration sites. Senior manager of the company said that with an experience of around 46 years, OGDCL is technically sound with a highly qualified pool of professionals to undertake and supervise oil and gas exploration activities abroad.

In its quest to gain international exposure OGDCL has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a Ukrainian company to carry out mineral search through latest technology n Pakistan.

The MoU with DGS Global will enable the OGDCL to locate mineral deposits including oil and gas with the support of new technology called the Remote Mineral Search and Prospecting.

This technology enables remote collection of photographs from space of areas under investigation for oil and gas. In the past several agreements were executed in North Africa, Far East, Middle East, Russian States but due to rising cost and difficult government procedures, the plan was derailed to explore these areas.

“The main factor in Algeria was that the fields were not economical and technically viable,” an official of OGDCL said.

The state-owned firm OGDCL had earlier in the year signed a technical cooperation agreement with another public sector E&P firm Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) for technical cooperation in new ventures in Pakistan and abroad.

Senior officials of OGDCL said that the joint venture with PPL would provide the OGDCL access to technical information based on past experience of PPL.

Both the companies had conducted basic studies for operations in Iraq, Yemen, Oman, Algeria and Libya.

While, OGDCL has tried to enter into joint ventures with multinationals like ENI at various operations in North Africa, they lost to Russian giant Gazprom, as the price offered in the bid was too high and with less cash reserves, it was difficult to compete.

Energy, Investment, Oil, Pakistan, Policy joint venture, ogdcl

Pakistan government has raised the petroleum oil products’ prices by an amount ranging from Rs 4.37 per litre to Rs 5.61 per litre in the country for the month of December 2009.

Accordingly Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority has notified new prices of various petroleum products including petrol, kerosene oil, Light-Diesel Oil (LDO) and HOBC here on Monday, while the oil marketing companies (OMCs) have released the increased price of high-speed diesel (HSD) as it is a deregulated product.

Consumers, Oil, Petrol

Pakistan’s oil import bill has declined to $3.076 billion in first four months of current financial year against $4.856 billion in the corresponding months of previous year, registering 36.65 percent negative growth.

The import of both crude petroleum products and manufactured ones declined 49.21 and 27 percent, respectively during the months under review, Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) reported on Thursday.

Import of manufactured products came to $2.003 billion in the July-October against $2.744 billion in the same months of previous year. Crude petroleum products totaled $1.072 billion in the said months over $ 2.112 billion in the same period of previous year. The falling import of oil products gave much relief to government in the form of less spending on import that otherwise created grave difficulties for the government when import bill was touching its highest levels in the history of the country. Analysts said that fall in the import of petroleum products were mainly attributed to sharp decline in its price globally.

On month-on-month basis, import of oil grew 29.38 percent over the preceding month of September and when compared with the same month of previous year, its import fell by 10.68 percent.

Energy, Oil, Pakistan

The Water and Power Ministry has received an appalling 15.6 percent of total budgetary allocation for the first quarter of the current year, an amount that flagrantly disregards the critical contribution of this ministry to not only national output, but also to serious issues of households-related to water and power deficiency in the country.

The Finance Ministry provided Rs 2.8 billion during the first quarter (July-September) of 2009-10 financial year to the Water and Power Ministry as against the total committed quarterly allocation, amounting to Rs 17.85 billion. During three-day PSDP review meeting held recently, the Finance Ministry gave top priority to the Ministries of Petroleum and Natural Resources, Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA), Ports and Shipping, Communication, Population, Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and Health Ministry.

The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources received 85 percent of the budgetary allocations, amounting to Rs 170 million as against the request of Rs 200 million in the first quarter.

The Finance Ministry gave second priority to Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA), which received 75.1 percent of the committed funds, amounting to Rs 82.5 million as against the committed amount of Rs 109.8 million in the first quarter. The Ministry of Ports and Shipping received 72.2 percent fund releases, amounting to Rs 16 million as against the requirement of Rs 22 million in the first quarter.

Via Business Recorder

Economics, Electricity, Energy, Nuclear, Oil, Pakistan, Petrol, Water, power