State-owned Pakistan LNG has released a tender inviting firms to submit bids for one spot LNG shipment for delivery in January.
Pakistan LNG is seeking one 140,000 cbm cargo on a delivered ex-ship (DES) basis and the delivery window is January 8-9, 2024, according to a document released on November 20.
Also, the potential tender winner will deliver the cargo to the FSRU BW Integrity serving Pakistan GasPort’s terminal in Port Qasim, Karachi, or the Energo Elengy facility.
The tender closes on November 24.
Prior to this tender, Pakistan LNG received offers from traders Trafigura and Vitol for two spot cargoes with deliveries on December 7-8 and December 13-14.
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.
Media reports suggested that Pakistan LNG decided only to accept the offer from Vitol for the December 7-8 delivery.
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.
JKM for January is currently below $17/MMBtu.