Refinery sales improve slightly

Attock Refinery gained the most from its competitors in July.

KARACHI: Refinery sales improved by 1.3 per cent in June as major refineries started operations after being shutdown due to annual maintenance in the preceding month.

High speed diesel posted an increase of 17% on a yearly basis while petrol sales fell by 12%, according to latest data released by Oil Companies Advisory Committee.

Attock Refinery was the major gainer as sales jumped 22 per cent on a monthly basis in July.

High yielding refineries such as Attock Refinery and National Refinery margins are estimated to have bounced back to $3.5 per barrel compared with last quarter average of $2 per barrel, according to an Invest Cap research note.

However, margins are still estimated to be inferior owing to both lower spreads as well as low relative yield, adds the note.

Byco did not register any sales due to its annual maintenance during the period under review.

While Petroleum consumption saw 1.4%YoY decline during Jul-11 Consumption of the petroleum products in the first month of the new financial year declined 1.4 per cent on a yearly basis led by a fall in high speed diesel and furnace oil which has a combined contribution of more than 80% to the petroleum products basket.

Average price increase of around 35 per cent at retail levels and slowdown in economic activities also slowed consumption, says the note.  Total petroleum consumption volume stood at 1.85 million tons during the period under review.

Attock eats Shell and PSO market share

Pakistan State Oil once again lost a massive 5.68 percentage points to stand at 63.2% while Shell fell by 2.41 percentage points to stand at 11.4%. Attock Petroleum was the only company to improve its market share by a solid 1.6 percentage points to 7.5% with a sharp 25 per cent growth in volumes.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 16^th, 2011.