Pakistan's Federal Cabinet Approves LNG Terminal

Pakistan's federal cabinet on Friday approved import of LNG and construction of LNG terminal at Karachi, according to reports in local media.

After this decision Elengy Terminal Pakistan Limited (ETPL), a subsidiary of Engro Corporation Limited, will construct a terminal and undertake activities related to the project at Port Qasim.

A tolling tariff of $0.66/MMBTU for LNG services project was approved by the cabinet.

The contract will be for a 15-year period that will provide 200 MMBTU of LNG in the first year and would be increased to 400 MMBTU from the second year. 

Elengy has been granted 335 days to complete the construction of the terminal.

Pakistan is looking to import LNG from Qatar and the two parties are negotiating the price. During negotiations with the previous Pakistani government, Doha had offered LNG export at a price equivalent to 14.7% of Brent crude oil when it was hovering around $110 per barrel in the international market. Later, it pushed the price down to $17.437 per million British thermal units (mmbtu), a 0.5% discount over the previous rate of $18.002 for the 20-year lifetime of the project.