A 10-member delegation is expected to visit Iran during the first week of August for exploring avenues in seeking potential market for the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) industry.
The delegation would be led by Petroleum Additional Secretary Iftikhar Ahmad and would be co-ordinated by CNG Station Owners Association President Malik Khuda Baksh.
This was decided at a meeting of stakeholders in the CNG business with the Petroleum additional secretary on Sunday.
Khuda Baksh informed Iftikhar Ahmad that Pakistan can offer know-how in operational, construction, maintenance, and engineering side of the CNG sector where it has ample manpower and technical expertise.
Besides, Pakistan can introduce 'mother-daughter concept' in Iran - a concept, which is applicable, where laying of natural gas pipelines is very expensive.
The concept entails constructing a CNG station called 'mother station' at the site where gas is available. This station compresses the gas that is filled in special long tubes (or specialised cylinders), which are mounted on the trailers (called mobile cascade) through specialised dispensers (filling posts). At these sites, another CNG station (called daughter station) is constructed, the purpose of which is to receive the compressed gas from the long tubes, and then decompress or de-pressurise it.
He said Iran has allocated $2 billion for the promotion of CNG culture with a view to reducing the growing menace of pollution there.
"We will see how much foreign exchange we can bring from Iran to Pakistan during this visit", Khuda Baksh added.
Iran has targeted converting 1.5 million vehicles to CNG in four years and construct 500 stations. This tour of Pakistani businessmen is in response to the last visit of Iranian delegation, a few months back.
Malik Khuda Baksh told that he was hopeful that the tour would be fruitful to the country, and efforts would be made to provide opportunity for the export of manpower from Pakistan.
Pakistan is producing CNG buses, and if there is a market for such buses in Iran then Pakistan can earn substantial foreign exchange from the export of these buses, he said, adding: "We can easily export 5,000 trained people to Iran having expertise in installation, construction, engineering and maintenance".
The Association chief said the delegation would survey the Iranian market and ensure that the interest of Pakistan is protected, adding: "We are interested in sending our technical manpower to Iran rather than training them here. This would help increase remittances."
We are interested in exporting our products and services, but at the same time, we will make sure that whatever manpower is sent abroad are genuine and trained otherwise we will lose the credibility of the country", Malik Khuda Baksh added.