Islamabad August 16 2023: Refineries throughout witnessed a decrease of 13.35 percent during the fiscal year 2023 as compared to the last year due to lower consumption of petroleum products, OCAC reported.
Sales of petroleum products decreased by 26 percent to 16.6 million tons during fiscal year 2023 due to higher petroleum prices and lower demand from power sector, according to data shared by OCAC.
Pakistan crude oil imports declined by 15.84 percent during the fiscal year 2023 to 7.80 million tons when compared with crude oil imports of 9.27 million tons in the same period last year.
Most of the petroleum products witnessed drop in production but Jet fuel oil and High-Octane are the two items that showed increased during the year. During fiscal year 2023, production of High Speed Diesel declined by 17.1 percent with production of 29.2 million barrels when compared to production of 35.4 million barrels in the last year. Likewise, the production of Gas oil (Petrol) decreased by 11.5 percent in fiscal year 2023 when compared with last year production of 18.78 million barrels.
The production of Kerosene oil dropped by 5.5 percent, diesel oil by 9.7 percent and furnace oil by 14.7 percent.
Jet fuel of type JP-1 production increased by 8.7 percent in fiscal year 2023 to 4.3 million barrels while of type JP-8 decreased by 0.3 percent this year.
MS margins averaged in negative territory in fiscal year based on Arab Gulf prices while Refiners enjoyed more than USD 15.1 per barrel margins on HSD against below USD 10 per barrel margins last year. Furnace oil margins averaged negative USD 35.4 per barrel in fiscal year 2023.
“Refiners are struggling to keep up with demand growth, as the shift to new feedstocks, outages and high temperatures have forced many operators to run at reduced rates” states IEA report.
However, tight gasoline and diesel markets have pushed margins to six-month highs. While naphtha remains under pressure, due to competition from cheap LPG and weak petrochemical activity outside of China, high-sulphur fuel oil has tightened significantly as refiners replace lost OPEC+ crude with lighter and sweeter grades. High sulphur fuel oil in Rotterdam rose above North Sea Dated for the first time in 28 years.
