KARACHI: Russian crude will produce more Furnace Oil (FO) than High Speed Diesel (HSD), which will not reduce prices of petroleum products locally, JEE News learned on Monday.
According to oil industry players, the arrival of the first cargo of Russian crude has been celebrated from the highest levels of government to the media.
However, the expected reduction in the prices of petroleum products, especially diesel and petrol, will not be possible in the near future.
Pakistan Refinery Limited (PRL) received its first cargo of 45,000 tonnes of Russian crude oil on Sunday, and its discharge from the ship began on Monday.
“It will take twenty to thirty hours for the complete discharge of this crude oil,” Karachi Port Trust said.
On the other hand, people in the oil industry believed that while Russian oil was being hyped, its commercial viability did not look promising.
He pointed out that Russian crude oil is heavy and will produce 50% of furnace oil, 32% of high speed diesel and 18% of the remaining products.
On the other hand, he pointed out that domestic refineries can extract 50% HSD and 25% furnace oil from Arabian crude oil.
They believed that Russian crude oil could disrupt the economic pattern of petroleum products from crude oil, and to be more commercially viable, the price of oil should be at a more discounted level.
He said that the first Russian cargo was a trial. After its processing, its refining report will be sent to the government to determine its economic viability for the country.
According to him, the current government’s purchase of Russian crude oil also seems to be an attempt to thwart the narrative of the former Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf government, which has continuously criticized the current government for dragging its feet. Crude oil imports from Russia
Producers said that producing more furnace oil from this crude oil would further increase the existing reserves of this fuel. Pakistan currently has a huge stockpile of FO in the range of hundreds of thousands of tonnes due to non-absorption by local power plants.
He said that after power generation plants refused to store FO, Pakistani refineries have struggled to dispose of this huge stockpile.
Refineries also exported some stocks to the international market at low prices to facilitate the operation of their refineries.
