Second shipment of discounted Russian crude oil arrives in Pakistan

Islamabad, June 28 (EFE).- The second shipment of discounted Russian crude oil arrived at Pakistan’s port city of Karachi, thereby completing the first order of 100,000 tons of Russian crude oil under a deal between Islamabad and Moscow, an official said Wednesday.

The ship, carrying around 55,000 tons of crude oil, berthed at oil pier 3 of the port from where the crude oil will be supplied to oil refineries.

The first-ever Russian cargo ship carrying 45,000 metric tons of crude oil had reached Pakistan earlier in the month.

“The Russian oil vessel Clyde Noble carrying around 55,000 tons of crude oil reached Karachi yesterday and is currently anchored at the Karachi Port,” Mubashir Hussain, an official at the Karachi Port Trust told EFE on Wednesday.

Last month, the government had announced that a cargo ship with 100,000 tons of Russian crude oil would reach Oman port, from where smaller ships would transport the oil to Pakistan.

A ship carrying more than 50,000 tons cannot be anchored at any Pakistani port due to lack of facilities and limited capacity.

Petroleum Minister Musadik Malik had said earlier that the country paid for its first government-to-government import of discounted Russian crude in Chinese currency.

The order for the 100,000 tons of the discounted Russian oil was made in April.

However, the government has said that imports are expected to reach 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) if the first transaction goes through smoothly.

The South Asian nation imported 154,000 bpd of oil in 2022, data from analytics firm Kpler showed.

Saudi Arabia was the biggest supplier of oil to Pakistan, followed by the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Malaysia, and Netherlands.

Oil import from Russia will reduce Pakistan’s dependency on the Middle East while providing Russia a new market in the world’s fifth most populous country.

Moscow’s oil sales to India and China have increased recently amid Western sanctions on account of its war on Ukraine.

The discounted Russian oil arrives in Pakistan at a time when the country is facing an acute balance of payments crisis with depleting foreign exchange reserves.

Oil and energy make up the largest portion of Pakistan’s import bill.

However, the Russian oil has not made any impact on oil prices in the Pakistani local market so far.

The country kept petroleum prices unchanged in its last fortnightly review of prices on June 15. EFE

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