PSO awarded $14.6 million after winning arbitration case against Gunvor

Pakistan State Oil Co (PSO), the country’s largest oil marketing and distribution company, has won an arbitration case against international energy trader Gunvor Group Limited pertaining to excess payments for natural gas shipments.

The London Court of International Arbitration sided with Pakistan’s state-owned petroleum corporation, which had reduced payments to Gunvor due to overcharged shipments, Bloomberg reported citing people with knowledge of the matter.

PSO was awarded $14.6 million, as well as other costs, on October 8 for the case initiated by Gunvor in 2020, said the report.

Gunvor declined to comment, while PSO also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, the report added.

On the other hand, the South Asian country is dealing with fuel shortages, particularly in its power sector.

Earlier this month, Pakistan LNG Limited (PLL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Government Holdings Private Limited (GHPL), failed to receive a single bid for the purchase of 72 LNG cargoes from international suppliers across a period of six years.

Meanwhile, amid supply-chain disruptions globally owing to the Russia-Ukraine war, prices of energy commodities including LNG have skyrocketed.

Back in 2019, Swiss prosecution authorities ordered the Geneva oil trader Gunvor to pay almost $100 million over corruption in the Republic of Congo and the Ivory Coast.

The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) in a statement back then said that Gunvor had shown "serious deficiencies in its internal organisation" and had "failed to prevent the bribery of public officials in the Republic of Congo and Ivory Coast between 2008 and 2011."