Private sector LPG imports have started arriving in Pakistan to meet the anticipated high-demand cycle during the oncoming winter season, the LPG Association of Pakistan (LPGAP) said on Friday. "The private sector is robust and proactive in ensuring demand requirements are met efficiently and in a timely manner across the country," said Belal Jabbar, LPGAP spokesman.
"For the last 11 years, since deregulation of the sector, private sector LPG marketing companies and producers have regularly imported product throughout the year to maintain price stability." The first ship to cater for winter demand has arrived at the Engro Vopak Terminal Limited facility in Karachi.
This cargo of 1,600MT has been imported by Aftab Traders, an LPG marketing company, and another cargo of 2,500MT imported by Jamshoro Joint Venture Limited (JJVL), an LPG producer, is arriving on October 18. The cargoes have also been necessitated on account of the sudden stop in local LPG production at public sector Oil and Gas Development Company Limited's (OGDCL) Bobi and Dakhni gas fields.
OGDCL's Bobi Plant has been shutdown since September 13 because of flooding in Sindh province, and its Dakhni Plant is undergoing annual maintenance work. Another OGDCL facility, at Kunnar, is also scheduled to close for annual repairs from October 15-24. Together, Bobi, Dakhni and Kunnar produce 140MT/D of LPG, or about 12 percent of Pakistan's total daily production.
"The private sector is cognisant of its responsibilities to our nation-wide consumers and the imported parcels will help ease pricing pressure on the product," said Jabbar, adding that these are the first LPG cargoes to be imported after the Honourable Lahore High Court suspended clauses of the LPG (Production and Distribution) Policy 2011. "Certain quarters had peddled the fiction that the private sector somehow opposes imports, it does not," said Jabbar. "For several years, it is only the private sector that has imported product in order to cater to additional demand."
Jabbar said that the impugned LPG Policy 2011 would have forced LPG marketing companies to import LPG throughout the year from select LPG brokers regardless of market realities and led to a steep escalation in prices. "Current imports are a natural response to the demand-supply imbalance and are evidence of the success of a deregulated LPG sector," he said.-PR