Islamabad November 20 2022: Refineries throughout witnessed a decrease of 24.4 percent during the month of September 2022 as compared to the corresponding month of last year (September 2021), OCAC reported.
Due to decline in production during September 2022, the overall throughput of Refineries during first quarter of fiscal year 2023, which runs from July-June, witnessed a significant decrease of 18.9 percent as compared to first quarter fiscal year 2022.
Refiners faced challenges to secure confirmation from foreign banks on Letters of Credit (LCs) for import of Crude Oil due to downgrading of Country’s outlook to negative by international rating agencies, which not only resulted in disruptions in Crude Oil import plan but also caused cancellation as well as delayed supplies of crude oil cargoes at exorbitantly higher LC confirmation rates.
During the first quarter, Refiners crude oil imports declined 23.1 percent to 1.9 million tons compared to 2.4 million tons in the same period last year.
These difficulties further aggravated by unprecedented country-wide flooding that caused widespread devastation especially in agricultural and transportation sector resulting in decline in product offtake during the quarter.
Moreover, production of refineries across the board witnessed steep decline barring Jet fuel oil during the first quarter of fiscal year 2023.
Production of High Speed Diesel declined by 25.5 percent in first quarter fiscal year 2023 with production of 6.73 million barrels when compared to production of 9.03 million barrels in the same period last year. However, the production of Jet fuel increased by 41.3 percent in the first quarter of fiscal year 2023 when compared to the corresponding period last year 2021.
Motor Spirit production declined by 13.7 percent in first quarter 2023 with production of 4.71 million barrels when compared to production of 5.46 million barrels in the same period last year.
Likewise, the production of Furnace oil decreased by 13.9 percent, lubricating oil by 14.8 percent and Kerosene Oil by 26.0 percent. Likewise, the production of diesel oil declined by 28.7 percent, Solvent Naptha by 60.8 percent and LPG by 12.8 percent.
The petroleum products that contributed in positive growth in production other than jet fuel is Jute Batching Oil.
