Pakistan’s fuel oil exports to fall as peak summer season approaches: analysts
Pakistan’s fuel oil exports are expected to drop during the peak summer season of May-July, as increased household and industrial consumption drives up domestic power sector’s reliance on the fuel, market analysts told S&P Global Platts.
Abdullah Umer, a research analyst at Karachi-based brokerage Ismail Iqbal Securities, said that among domestic electricity producers commonly known as Independent Power Producers, or IPPs fuel oil demand witnessed a 36% growth in the 2020-2021 fiscal year, while fuel oil-based power generation rose 17% over the same period.
IPPs account for about 80% of the country’s fuel oil consumption, with the remaining 20% coming from captive power plants installed at domestic heavy industries, local refinery sources said.
As the results’ season draws to a close, analysts work feverishly on their calculators to determine the corporate profitability for the quarter ended on Dec 31, 2020.
The results are pleasantly surprising. The aggregate profit earned by listed companies in the quarter amounted to Rs213.9 billion, registering impressive growth of 38 per cent year-on-year. Sector-wise reviews show the segment with the heaviest weight in the KSE-100 index, commercial banks, contributed the highest sum of Rs48bn earned in the quarter. The figure, however, fell by 8pc over the profits recorded in the same quarter in 2019.
The oil and gas exploration and production sector produced the second highest profit after tax of Rs41bn for the quarter, which was 15pc lower than the earnings of Rs48.1bn in the same quarter in 2019.