Byco might just be getting ready to become the country’s largest fuel maker. While local print media seems oblivious, Byco will restart its largest oil refinery next month that closed down almost two years ago after a fire, BOPL’s CEO told Bloomberg in a recent interview. Byco Oil Pakistan Limited (BOPL) is owned by Byco Industries Incorporated (BII), Mauritius, which is the ultimate parent company. BOPL owns a major shareholding in Byco Petroleum Pakistan Limited (BPPL), which is a listed company in Pakistan.
Recall that BOPL’s 120k barrel-per-day refinery has been shut since October 2015 –only three months after it was inaugurated – when a fire damaged its crude oil heater. Initially, the damage was thought to be minor and the refinery was expected to resume production very shortly, but it extended to almost two years. While such big complexes do carry risks, an almost two-year period of quietness has been a long time.
All Byco companies have finally been merged into one entity, with Byco Petroleum Pakistan Limited absorbing its holding and subsidiary companies. The High Court of Sindh in January, 2017 approved the merger of Byco Oil Pakistan Limited and Byco Terminals Pakistan Limited with and into Byco Petroleum Limited.
Byco Petroleum Pakistan Limited already has a 35,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery and an OMC with 261 retail outlets across the country. So it seems that the restoration of the 120K refinery is just in time to bring synergetic benefits to the group in the form of economies of scale and value chain integration.
Also, with petroleum volumetric sales not taking a breather, and the demand expected to increase especially for the transportation and the trucking sector as CPEC progresses, Byco’s integration and restoration will bear fruits for the group; not to forget that positives of the refinery addition to an economy where imports override consumption.
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