Dear Niaz Sb,
Thanks for the kind reply, as always your inputs are highly appreciated and cherished. I will try to further expand on it.
I definitely agree LNG will always be costlier than any gas transported through pipeline either IP or TAP, due to number of add on charges, like you said of terminal charges, and on top of it Port charges, Custom Clearance charges, etc. The comparison shouldn't be with end-user prices but with the landfall prices at Pakistan borders, and the dollar amount we are paying to these suppliers. If we are going to consider add on cost for LNG, we should also consider operations & transmission charges incurred on ISGS, which will result in an added tariff.
The combined cost for regasification at our two terminals, if fully utilized for contracted capacity of 1200 mmcfd should come out to be
~$0.4291/mmbtu. The daily combined charges paid to these two is $ 515,000/ day. But since we are under utilizing PGPL, the actual cost varies with number of cargoes it is dealing on per month basis. For the term contracted 2 cargoes/ month of PLL that gets regasified there, cost will be
~$1.1538/mmbtu. For FSRU, we will be receiving 5 cargoes/month from now on against 6 which we were receiving till Dec, 2020, cost will be
~$0.4968/mmbtu against earlier
~$0.4141/mmbtu.
With the current formula including fixed amount, Iranian gas is cheaper than our LNG, which is due to lower JCC price owing to lesser import of crude oil volumes by Japan in 2020, this JCC will not remain cheap this or next year. Also in 2024, when this pipeline is supposed to be commissioned, the LNG market would have been totally changed. Term contracts have already started to use gas-linked benchmarks. The trend in term prices indexed with oil is a steady downward slope of 15 to 10.6% of Brent (from 2014 to 2020). With newer projects coming online, with more and more LNG volumes getting available in market, prices are bound to go down, and we might end up seeing LNG being price at 7-8% slope for term deals in 2023/ 2024 timeline. The viability of Iranian gas at 6.3% slope to JCC with a fixed component makes no economical sense in current and future market scenarios for Pakistan. Iran has to sweeten this deal in order for us to commit to this project. Mere $500 mil loan for construction of Pakistan's portion won't cut it.
The pricing formula is hard to find from open source. One article published in 2007 writes;
"The Iranian gas under the approved formula will translate into $3.67 per MMBTU when the JCC price is $40 per barrel of oil -- a rate least expected given current international prices. The gas price will be $4.3 per MMBTU at $50 per barrel and $4.93 per MMBTU at $60 per barrel.
The gas rate at the Pakistan border will rise to $5.56 per MMBTU when crude prices reach $70 per barrel. The tariff will further rise to $6.56 per MMBTU and $7.06 in case oil prices increase to $80 and $90 per barrel, respectively."
ISLAMABAD, April 10: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet on Tuesday approved gas-sharing with...
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