Pakistan is all set to import a huge quantity of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) annually from Qatar on government-to-government agreement basis, said Dr Asim Hussain, Advisor to the Prime Minister on Petroleum and Natural Resources. He was briefing the media on the achievements made by the incumbent government, here on Tuesday. Dr Asim said that the ministry of petroleum was going to move a summary on Wednesday (today) regarding the import of LNG from Qatar.
He said that the government was going to import LNG from Qatar on government-to-government agreement basis after it was stopped by the court to go ahead with the LNG import project. He disclosed that the Qatar government had agreed to reduce the commodity price and Pakistan would import 200 million tons of LNG annually from the country.
To finance the imported gas projects, the government had imposed Gas Infrastructure Development Cess (GIDC) on industrial, fertiliser and CNG sectors, he said, adding that within three years Pakistan would generate sufficient funds to finance these projects through GIDC.
He further said that the government was all set to divide gas utilities to minimise losses on account of Unaccounted for Gas and bring reforms in accordance with the international standards. Dr Asim said that to deal with the gas shortage, the government had undertaken numerous steps during the past five years.
He said that to expedite oil and gas exploration the government was encouraging E&P companies to undertake offshore exploration. Dr Asim said that the government had notified Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Policy 2012, which offered a maximum price of $6.5 per million British Thermal Units (mmbtu) for onshore and a maximum of $9 per mmbtu for offshore oil and gas discoveries.
He was of the view that in order to overcome the energy crisis, the country needed to undertake Iran-Pakistan (IP), Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI), Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) air-mix projects. He said that the government would soon sign an agreement with Iranian government for setting up a modern and the biggest oil refinery in the country with daily refining capacity of 0.4 million barrels. The government had asked the local refineries to upgrade their units as per international standards and by the end of 2015 only Euro-II standard diesel would be allowed in the country, he added.
He further said that to upgrade the local refining units an estimated cost of $2.4 billion was projected of which 20 percent would be borne by the government. Dr Asim said that the government had decided in principle to break up the Sui Northern Gas Pipeline Limited (SNGPL) and Sui Southern Gas Company Limited (SSGC) to minimise the UFG and bring the latest reforms in the gas distribution system.
He said that to resolve the ever-increasing gas prices of fertiliser in the country, the government had arranged provision of gas to fertiliser plants from gas fields directly, which would help reduce farm products prices, besides increasing the produce. Dr Asim said that at present the government was unable to restore seven days a week gas supply to CNG stations.