Petroleum and lubricant sales clocked in at 1.79 million tons in March 2018, depicting a decline of 11 percent on year-on-year basis while up by 23 percent on month-on-month basis on account of additional working days in March compared to last month and higher offtake of furnace oil as oil-fired independent power producers remained operative to meet electricity shortfall.
Moreover, despite increase in prices of high speed diesel (HSD) by 27.2 percent to Rs 98.45/liter from September 2017 to March 2018, and uptick in prices of Motor Spirit (MS) by 23.2 percent to Rs 88.07/liter from September 2017 to March 2018 demand remained robust.
On the industry front, furnace oil (FO) sales continued to register a decline of 46 percent on YoY while up by 49 percent MoM to 0.37 million tons. On sequential basis, the demand of FO witnessed an uptick on the back of rising electricity demand of the country along with the fact that RLNG power plants are facing technical issues which is pushing the government to allow independent power producers to operate and meet electricity deficit. Similarly, HSD sales swelled by 24 percent on MoM and 9 percent on YoY to 0.73 million tons and MS registered a growth of 14 percent on MoM/5 percent on YoY to 0.60 million tons.
During first nine months of FY18, MS and HSD offtake jumped to 5.44 million tons and 6.73 million tons (both up by 10 percent on YoY) compared to 4.93 million tons and 6.13 million tons in the same period last year. Albeit, decline in FO sales took the overall positive growth to negative by 3 percent on YoY in the first nine months of FY18. "Although FO sales declined by 24 percent on YoY to 5.28 million tons, we expect this decline to become more visible in the upcoming months", Arsalan Hanif, an analyst at Arif Habib Limited said.
Despite dip in industry sales, HASCOL and APL emerged as one of the best performers and posted growth of 37 percent on YoY and 6 percent on YoY. The total market share of HASCOL increased to 13.7 percent in March 2018 (10.1 percent in March 2017), largely fueled by growth in sales volumes of MS and HSD. APL's market share increased to 11.8 percent in March 2018 (8.3 percent in March 2017) whereas, market share of PSO and SHEL fell down and settled-in at 39.3 percent and 7.9 percent in March 2018 (March 2017: PSO: 51.8 percent and SHEL: 10.2 percent).