CASE STUDIES / PRICING · JUL 2026
The Pakistan tender only pays above $19.72.
A committed Oman-to-Asia book meets an open DES tender at Port Qasim. Ten full re-optimisations locate the exact price at which diverting one cargo beats leaving the plan alone.
$19.72/MMBtu
BREAK-EVEN TENDER PRICE · DES PORT QASIM · WORTH +$1.59M AT $20.00
Six liftings, six committed sales.
01 · THE BOOK
The reference portfolio is deliberately plain: six FOB liftings at Qalhat against six firm DES sales split between Tianjin and Futtsu, two vessels, one loading every twenty days. Nothing is optional and the optimiser has nothing to decide.
FOB LONG · OMAN LNG (QALHAT)
- 6 liftings · Oct 2026 to Jan 2027
- 13% × Brent
- 3,850,000 MMBtu each, min = max
DES SHORT · TIANJIN
- 3 firm sales
- JKM − 0.15
- 15.3-day voyage from Qalhat
DES SHORT · FUTTSU
- 3 firm sales
- JKM + 0.05
- 15.6-day voyage from Qalhat
BASE PLAN · 6 LADEN + 4 BALLAST JOURNEYS · $167.93M · $7.36/MMBTU · MIP GAP 0
One tender, and a way to cover the hole.
02 · THE TENDER
A DES tender opens at Port Qasim for an 11 to 13 November window, quoted as a flat price. Serving it means diverting a committed cargo, so a standing backfill offer stands at each Asian terminal. Both are take-it-or-leave-it.
THE TENDER · DES PORT QASIM
- 1 cargo · 11 to 13 Nov 2026
- Flat price, swept from $17.00 to $22.00
- A 1.5-day leg from Qalhat against a two-week voyage to Asia
- Delivers 3,808,117 MMBtu at Qasim
STANDING BACKFILL OFFERS
- DES Long Tianjin at JKM + 0.30
- DES Long Futtsu at JKM + 0.35
- Windows mirror the firm sales exactly
- Priced above the sales they replace, so they only fire to cover a diversion
- X-LNG picks Tianjin and never uses Futtsu
LIVE FEED FORWARDS · NOV-26 BRENT $84.58 · JKM $19.89 · TENDER QUOTED FLAT, NOT INDEXED
Two routes, and the optimiser picks one.
03 · THE MECHANIC
Everything the tender price decides comes down to a single fork. Below the strike the book runs untouched. At and above it, one Oman lifting turns south to Qasim and the stranded Tianjin sale is covered on paper.
Ten prices, ten full optimisations.
04 · THE LADDER
Each rung is a complete re-optimisation of the whole book, not an interpolation. Below $19.72 the tender is declined and profit matches the base plan to the dollar. The flip is empirical: $19.71 stays, $19.7128 goes.
PROFIT VS THE BASE PLAN · EVERY ROW A FULL X-LNG RUN AT MIP GAP 0 · $167.93M UNCHANGED ON ALL FIVE DECLINED RUNS
Flat, then linear, with a kink between.
05 · THE STRIKE
Plotted per unit of tender volume the ladder is a payoff diagram: worth nothing below the strike, rising in a straight line above it. Once the diversion is on, every extra dollar of tender price falls through to profit.
$19.72
BREAK-EVEN PRICE · $/MMBTU DES PORT QASIM
$3.81M
ADDED PER $1.00 · THE DELIVERED VOLUME
+$1.59M
OPTION VALUE AT $20.00
10
FULL RE-OPTIMISATIONS · NONE INTERPOLATED
Two $75M flows that almost cancel.
06 · THE ANATOMY
At the strike the diversion is not a freight play. Selling into Qasim earns $75.07M and giving up Tianjin costs $73.04M; what survives is the paper backfill. Re-optimising the fleet is worth $37k on a $168M book.
07 · THE VERDICT
The tender is not priced by the freight it saves:
it is priced by the sale it strands.
Diverting to Port Qasim frees a two-week voyage and returns $37k. What actually sets the strike is the $1.57M cost of covering the Tianjin sale that the diversion leaves open. Any bid rule built on freight savings would have put the break-even in the wrong place.
What the ladder says about bidding.
08 · TAKEAWAYS
The strike is a backfill premium, not a freight saving
Fleet re-optimisation contributes $37k. The $1.57M backfill cost is what stands between a declined tender and an exercised one, which is why the strike sits close to the backfill ask rather than well below it.
Above the strike the payoff is exactly linear
Every $1.00 of tender price adds $3,808,117, precisely the volume delivered at Qasim. At $20.00 the tender is worth $1.59M; at $22.00, $9.20M.
The number belongs to this book, not to the market
$19.72 is a property of these six liftings, these two vessels and today's forwards. Move the curve and the strike moves with it. It is a bidding rule to be re-run before each tender, not a price to be quoted from memory.
Modelled with X-LNG.
09 · THE TOOL
Your world goes in
Contracts, vessels, charter rates, prices, spot assumptions and constraints. The full book, not a slice.
One optimal plan comes out
Feasible, P&L-maximising and constraint-compliant, re-solved for every scenario in minutes.
Every number checks out
Each result can be recalculated by hand. Transparency your risk committee can audit.
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