State-owned Pakistan LNG has received offers for spot liquefied natural gas shipments from traders Trafigura and Vitol following a recent spot cargo tender.
Pakistan LNG released this tender on September 27 for two spot cargoes with deliveries on December 7-8 and December 13-14.
The tender closed on October 4 and Pakistan LNG received offers from Trafigura and Vitol Bahrain, according to an evaluation report published by the company.
Trafigura was the only firm to submit an offer for the delivery on December 13-14 and it offered a price of $19.3900/MMBtu.
Vitol offered the lowest price of 15.9700/MMBtu for the December 7-8 delivery, while Trafigura offered a price of 18.3900/MMBtu, the document shows.
Media reports suggest that Pakistan LNG decided only to accept the offer from Vitol for the December 7-8 delivery.
In June this year, Pakistan LNG launched two tenders for spot cargoes.
The firm received no offers for its tender seeking bids for a total of six spot LNG shipments for delivery in October and December, while Trafigura offered two shipments for the second tender seeking three cargoes over January-February 2024.
Trafigura offered a price of $23.4711/MMBtu for the January 3-4 delivery and $22.4722/MMBtu for the February 23-24 delivery.
This Trafigura offer was the first bid for spot LNG cargoes Pakistan received for its tenders in about a year.
However, several reports said that Pakistan LNG did not take this offer due to high prices.
Pakistan gets most of its supplies under long-term contracts from Qatar and on the spot market, however, last year prices surged and Europe took most of the available spot supplies.
In July this year, Pakistan also signed a one-year deal to buy one LNG cargo per month from Azerbaijan’s Socar.
GIIGNL data shows that Pakistan’s LNG imports dropped by 16 percent to 6.91 million tons last year due to high prices.
The country imported almost all of these volumes under long-term contracts from Qatar, or some 6.10 million tons, the data shows.
Spot prices dropped considerably this year, prompting Pakistan and other Asian countries such as Bangladesh to return to buying spot LNG.
The JKM for November settled at $14.245 per MMBtu on Wednesday.
