PRL plans 20-day shutdown for plant overhauls

KARACHI: Pakistan Refinery Limited (PRL) on Friday announced it would shut its refinery for twenty days against the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) direction to continue operations for meeting the country’s diesel requirements.

PRL communicated to Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) about shut down of the refinery, while sharing the material information with the shareholders.

“PRL is carrying out its regeneration shut down starting from 10th December 2022 for approximately 20 days. Consequently, the refinery will be shut down during this period,” the notice sent to the PSX stated.

PRL planned the shut down for annual maintenance, but OGRA in a letter to PRL management asked it to continue the operation in the month of December. OGRA wrote the letter to PRL at the start of the current month, after review meeting of supplies of oil in the country.

The PRL representative in the meeting had told that the refinery would be shut down because of the issue related to LCs for the crude.

However, OGRA directed PRL to adhere to its directives by not shutting down the refinery till February 2023 due to oil supply issues in the country.

In response to the PRL letter for shut down, OGRA said that the request of PRL for temporary shutdown has been examined by the OGRA’s Oil Supply Chain Department viz current demand-supply trend of POL products. Keeping in view the high demand of diesel in winter season and significant contribution of PRL therein, it said that the PRL was requested to reassess its technical and HSE issue and reschedule the proposed shutdown to the first half of February 2023.

PRL, on the other hand justified the shutdown on the ground that it was already planned. “PRL planned the shutdown in September and accordingly crude procurement planning was carried out,” PRL CEO Zahid Mir told The News.

He said that shutdown was technically required and could have been delayed for 1-2 months; however, due the non-availability of crude, “we could not delay shutdown as proposed by OGRA”.

Mir said that the refinery tried its level best to procure crude cargo to delay the shutdown, but could not get a confirmation for an urgent cargo of crude oil.

The local refineries have been facing hardships in opening and settling the letters of credit for the import of crude oil as banks were reluctant to provide the required dollar for the import cargoes.