ISLAMABAD: The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) has grilled Energas Marketing (Pvt) Ltd over its petition for grant of licence for sale of RLNG, in a public hearing held on Thursday.
The contracts with LNG suppliers, customers, capacity allocation, timeframe of imports, and volume of gas etc were examined by the regulator and the interveners.
Energas Marketing (Pvt) Ltd and Tabeer Energy Marketing (Pvt) Ltd required capacity allocation of operational terminal to grant license of sale and marketing of LNG across the country. These two companies are also setting up LNG terminals in private sector at their own risk. In its petition, Tabeer Energy Marketing (Pvt) Ltd urged that it would have the terminal capacity of its own terminal to sell and market RLNG.
However, officials of Energas stated that it would utilise the capacity of Pakistan LNG Limited (PLL) in April 2021.
Whereas, the PLL has available capacity of terminal in February and March 2021.
The regulator found the plans of sale and marketing of Energas effective and raised a number of questions.
Earlier, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Energas Anser Khan said they had been facing various challenges for the last four years to obtain license of sale and marketing of LNG.
The PLL required sale and marketing licence of LNG, whereas, the Ogra needs capacity allocation agreement, he added.
Representative of the PLL said that involvement of private sector would bring efficiency by utilising unutilised capacity.
He said that sale and marketing licence was a pre-requisite for Energas to participate in the bidding.
He maintained that the company had advertised terminal extra capacity but it was unable to allocate due to rising demand by the public sector.
Now, he said that they would issue advertisement to grant capacity in February and March, so that the private sector could import LNG. He said that the PLL had un-utilised capacity for month of February and March.
Member Gas Ogra Muhammad Arif also grilled the PLL for causing hurdles in allocation of capacity to the private sector. He said that the public sector companies work under the umbrella of government Petroleum Division and asked to go to government for approval to allocate capacity.
For smooth supply of RLNG to the private sector, he suggested, “To facilitate private sector and ensure timely captivity utilization, PLL should in corporate a provision with Petroleum Division, so that SNGPL-SSGCL gas companies owned by Petroleum Division can provide correspondent capacity in their respective system”.
Responding to the PLL concerns about the gas companies consumers, the Member Gas said that only better services and healthy competition of gas companies would be grantee of their survival.
Lucky Cement is confirmed client of Energas for RLNG supply.
However, there are two issues causing to halt supply of gas to Lucky Plant.
One is pipeline, where the UFG losses are high, and second, there is shortage of gas, the meeting was informed.
Rahat Kamal, an intervener, sought clarification regarding allocation of capacity.
He said that Energas indicated to utilise 250mmcfd capacity of the PLL.
Second, he said that the PLL had signed agreement with K-electric (KE) to supply 150mmcfd. “How PLL will make it possible,” he asked.
Muhammad Kashif, representing the PGPC, said that the PLL representative informed it had capacity for February and March. Energas said it would have the capacity in April that means that the PLL would not have any slot to offer to Energas in April.
Meanwhile, the Ogra conducted a public hearing in response to a petition filed by Tabeer Energy, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi in Pakistan.
Chief Marketing Officer Shigeki Terada representing Mitsubishi said that they integrated plan of LNG for non-interrupted supply of gas to various sectors especially CNG and power.
He said that it would give an option to customers and pledged to contribute to Pakistan’s economy by materialising plan of setting up LNG terminal and ensuring supplies.
Yasir Mukhtar team leader Tabeer Energy said that Mitsubishi had portfolio of operations and developing projects in the global market.
In answering questions posted by the Ogra representatives, Jawad Majeed, General Manager for TEMPL explained that the terminal would be commissioned and be ready for first gas by 1st half of 2023.
Regarding terminal capacity availability to third parties, he explained that for TEMPL first priority would be given to its own customers, and spare capacity would be available as per third party access (TPA) rules.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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