KARACHI, May 7: Total domestic petroleum consumption in the nine-months of FY’05 stood at 11.4m tons, which reflected 17.2 per cent increase over consumption of 7.2m tons in the same period last year, stock brokerage firm, First National Equities Limited, observed in an industry report. Analysts said: “Furnace oil, gasoline, HSD, lubes and aviation fuel volumes have shown a significant rise whereas LDO and kerosene consumption declined as these are among declining categories due to increased usage of natural gas.” There are currently four listed companies on the oil & gas development sector, with listed capital of Rs51.55 billion.

A report by First Capital Securities noted that during the first nine months of FY05, E&P companies posted healthy earnings growth owing to increased gas production in case of OGDC and PPL and increased oil production by OGDC. POL’s oil and gas production continued to decline while PPL’s oil and NGL production also decreased. “The declining production impact was mitigated by the rocketing international oil prices,” said the analysts.

They said that during the nine months of the current fiscal year (July-March 2004-05), besides the POL, two other listed E&P companies witnessed a growing trend in oil and gas production. Oil and gas production of POL continued to decline owing to the natural decline in most of its own fields and suspension of Turkwal field till November 2004.

The company’s oil production decreased by 8 per cent to 4389bpd. Similarly, gas and LPG production by POL also declined by 6 per cent and 13 per cent respectively to 23mmcfd and 703tpd. On the other hand, OGDC and PPL continued to report improvement in their oil and gas production. Oil production of OGDC registered an improvement of 32 per cent while oil production by PPL declined by 10 per cent to 29,683bpd. Gas production by those two companies increased by 18 per cent and 1 per cent to 735mmcfd and 698mmcfd respectively during first nine months of FY05.

According to the analyst, new fields were adding more value. Chanda field of OGDC, which commenced production since July 2004, was currently producing 2800bpd of oil and 10mmcfd of gas. Additional gas supply from Qadirpur field was also started during the year and currently the field is producing 550mmcfd of gas. Besides OGDC, PPL also has a working interest in the Qadirpur field. POL revived production from Turkwal field in November 2004, which was likely to have a positive impact on the company’s overall oil production, which was declining.

Another successful discovery at Pariwali field during the third quarter was also likely to add 1774bpd of oil, 10.5mmcfd of gas and 17tpd of LPG to POLs production from 4QFY05 and PRs390mn (PRs2.2/share) to FY05 earnings the company. Recent discoveries by OGDC in Jhal Magsi, Dakhni and Pasakhi Deep were likely to add around 1000bpd of oil and 37mmcfd of gas as those fields had been developed. Tal block was already producing from two wells and work on the third was under way.