Monsoon: PRL temporarily suspends production

Pakistan Refinery Limited (PRL), a subsidiary of the state-owned Pakistan State Oil (PSO), has temporarily suspended production after the recent spell of heavy rainfall and flooding affected the refinery’s operations and damaged its pipeline transporting crude oil to the refinery in the city of ports.

“It was not safe to continue operations and therefore the company decided to temporarily suspend the refinery operations to protect the people and equipment,” the company said in a notification to the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Friday.

“The assessment of the extent of the damage (of the pipeline connecting import terminal at Keamari to the refinery located at costal belt near Korangi, Karachi) and the time to repair is in progress but difficulties are being faced due to torrential rain and inaccessible sites,” the notification added.

The refinery has a capacity of processing 50,000 barrels per day of crude oil into a variety of distilled petroleum products such as furnace oil, high speed diesel, kerosene oil, jet fuel and motor gasoline etc, the refinery said on its official website.

The 50,000 barrels per day come to around 13% of the total requirement in the country, it was learnt.

“The suspension of the production may disrupt the supply chain of petroleum oil products in the country in case it takes too long time to resume production,” Arif Habib Limited Head of Research Tahir Abbas said while talking to The Express Tribune.

The company said in the notification that the decision on the timing of resuming refinery operations will be taken after the assessment is completed.

The refinery is situated on the coastal belt near Korangi in Karachi.

Due to the unusual heavy rain in Karachi on August 25, rain water has washed away a portion of the Piles Bridge carrying the intra-city oil pipeline of the company, which connects Keamari Terminal to the refinery at Korangi Creek transportation of cure oil and product.

“The incident resulted in a severely damaging the aforesaid oil pipeline,” the company said in another notification issued on Thursday.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 30^th, 2020.

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