ISLAMABAD-The government on Thursday slightly raised the average sale price of re-gasified liquefied natural gas (RLNG) by up to $0.1768 (1.3 percent) per mmBtu for the consumers of both the Sui companies for May 2023. According to notification issued by OGRA, RLNG price for SNGPL consumers was increased by $0.1681/mmBtu, while for SSGC clients, prices have been jacked up by $0.1768/mmBtu) over the previous month (April 2023).
OGRA issued its determined RLNG weighted average sale provisional price notice and set RLNG prices at $13.3997/mmBtu for the consumers of SNGPL and $13.6569/mmBtu for SSGC consumers. According to the data, in May 2022, the RLNG price in the local market was the highest ($21.8317/mmBtu for SNGPL and $23.7873/mmBtu for SSGC) since Pakistan started importing LNG in 2015. Following a declining trend of four months, this is the first increase, which will also jack up the power generation cost from RLNG based power plants. It is worth to note that in January, RLNG prices were decreased by up to 2.2 percent, followed by a reduction of 4.3 percent in February and 3.16 percent in March, and in April it was reduced by 0.47 percent.
The newly notified prices of RLNG also include charges of the LNG terminals, transmission losses, port charges, and margins of the state-run importers—Pakistan State Oil (PSO) and Pakistan LNG Limited (PLL). These new weighted average sale prices of RLNG have been computed based on eight cargoes imported by PSO, while PLL imported two cargo of this super-chilled gas. Under two long-term contracts with Qatar, PSO is procuring LNG at 13.37 percent of Brent and 10.20 percent of Brent respectively. Six cargos were procured at a slope of 13.37 percent of Brent while two at 10.2 percent. As per the data, during last eight months PLL has procured one cargo per month, except for February when it made no procurement. For months of March and April, it imported one cargo each. And now for May, it imported two cargoes at a slope of 12.14 percent. Since LNG is pegged to price of crude, so gas price also fluctuates with crude price movement.