Page 5 - AsianOil Week 24

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renewed. Tensions between Washington and Tehran have been mounting in the months since, with the US accusing Iran for last week’s attacks on two oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz.
e Hindustan Times’ sources said that while one option on the table was to ask local re ners to use the crude, those companies were reluctant to do so because of inventory and cost issues.
ISPRL runs three facilities in Visakhapat- nam, Mangaluru and Padur with a combined storage capacity of slightly more than 5.33m tonnes (39.07m barrels). e Vishakhapatnam cavern has 1.33m tonnes (9.75m barrels) of stor- age capacity, while Mangaluru can hold 1.5m tonnes (11m barrels) and Padur has 2.5m tonnes (18.33m barrels) of capacity. e amount of Ira- nian crude being stored in the three is unclear.
“Sovereign governments may take the risk and act against the US sanctions, but no
commercial enterprise would jeopardise its business interests. Reinsurers are no exception,” the Hindustan Times quoted former chairman of state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC), RS Sharma, as saying.
India is in the process of expanding its SPR in order to better insulate itself from crude oil supply shocks. Expansion e orts will see a fur- ther two caverns converted into SPR facilities, with a total capacity of 6.5m tonnes – 4m tonnes (29.32m barrels) at Chandikhol and 2.5m tonnes (18.33m barrels) at Padur.
India’s oil consumption increased from 206.2m tonnes (4.14m barrels per day) in nan- cial year 2017-2018 to 211.6m tonnes (4.25m b/d) in nancial year 2018-2019. Once the ve caverns are up and running the country will be able to cover around 16 days’ worth of consump- tion at 2018-2019 levels.™
Pakistan lowers 2019-2020 oil, gas revenue target
POLICY
PAKISTAN’S government has lowered its oil and gas revenue target for nancial year 2019- 2020, which starts on July 1, a er projecting that it would miss its nancial year 2018-2019 goal.
While the original target for 2018-2019 was 486.3bn rupees ($3.1bn), the government has revised down its revenue projections to 338bn rupees ($2.15bn). As such, the target for next year has been set at 359bn rupees ($2.29bn).
Government collections of the gas infra- structure development cess (GIDC) reportedly amounted to just 25bn rupees ($159.2m) of a targeted 100bn rupees ($636.6m) in the 2018- 2019 period.
The GIDC was introduced in December 2011 as a means of raising funds to help build gas pipelines. It has, however, proven to be a con- troversial tax. Major industrial players have been collecting the tax from end-users while default- ing on payments to the government. In January, one estimate put the outstanding amount owed to the state 452bn rupees ($2.88bn).
e defaulters have proven so successful in applying for court orders to stay the state’s collec- tion e orts that the government unveiled plans in January to waive 50% of the outstanding pay- ments. But this still failed to convince industry defaulters – which includes compressed natural gas (CNG) lling stations, independent power producers (IPPs) as well as textile and fertiliser manufacturers – to end their litigation e orts.
Because of the issues relating to GIDC collec- tions, Islamabad has set a collection target of just 30bn rupees ($191m) for 2019-2020.
e government has also lowered its petro- leum product sales tax target from 300bn rupees ($1.91bn) in 2018-2019 to 216.03bn rupees ($1.38bn) for 2019-2020. Actual collection esti- mates for the current period were revised down to 203.35bn rupees ($1.29bn).
The 2019-2020 royalty target for domestic crude oil production has been set at 24.6bn rupees ($156.6m) after 2018-2019’s target of 16.82bn rupees ($107.1m) was raised to 26.9bn rupees ($171.2m). e government’s 2018-2019 target of 10bn rupees ($63.6m) for the discount retained on local crude prices was later revised to 14.03bn rupees ($89.3m) and has been set at 16bn rupees ($101.8m) for the next 12-month period.
The government also intends to collect 51.5bn rupees ($327.8m) from gas consumers in the next nancial year compared with a revised estimate of 51.2bn rupees ($325.9m) in the cur- rent period.
e LPG petroleum levy target has been set at 4bn rupees ($25.5m) compared with the out- going nancial year’s revised estimate of 3.76bn rupees ($23.9m).
A gas development surcharge target has also been lowered from 16bn rupees ($101.8m) to 10bn rupees ($63.6m) a er 2018-2019 estimates were revised to 8bn rupees ($50.9m).™
Week 24 19•June•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P5