ISLAMABAD, May 17: MOL, oil and gas Group of Hungary, has decided to drill more exploratory wells in Pakistan and hopes to announce further discoveries soon. According to an announcement made by the local MOL office, another commercially viable discovery of gas was recently made at the Manzalai field.
"Based on this discovery, MOL Pakistan will produce 250 MMSCFD gas and 4,000 bb1 per day condensate after the first stage of field development in early 2009. From 2013, in the second and final stage, production will increase to 350 MMSCFD," it said.
By the end of 2006, the TAL joint venture had spent $220 million and additional substantial expenditure is envisaged for the years to come.
The joint venture partners are Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL), Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL), Pakistan Oilfield Limited (POL) and the Government Holdings of Pakistan Limited (GHPL).
MOL Group has reported that its net income, excluding special items improved by $97.8 million to $236.6 million in the first quarter of 2007, reflecting an improved financial performance.
The group's financial performance improved across all segments of the business apart from exploration and production and gas transmission. Refining and marketing, however, reflected a very strong performance as its operating profit saw an increase to $141.7 million up 23pc when compared to the same period last year. Higher sales volumes, stronger crack spreads and efficiency improvement more than compensated for the weakening US dollar in 2007. Similarly, petrochemical business also posted record profits.
MOL Group is leading integrated oil and gas company of central and eastern Europe and its subsidiary company MOL Pakistan has made significant hydrocarbon discoveries in the TAL Block.
It is already supplying 50 million cubic feet of natural gas per day from its Manzalai-1 (Gurguri) well to SNGPL at Kohat, and 600 bbl condensate per day.
It also produces daily a further 20 million cubic feet of natural gas and 1,500 bbl condensate from Makori-1. It has recently announced successful completion of tests for the third and fourth wells, Manzalai-2 and Manazalai-3.
Zsolt Hernadi, chairman and CEO of MOL commented, "Our downstream and petrochemical businesses delivered strong results, helped also by the favourable external environment. For 2007, we expect a similarly healthy crack-spread environment to that experienced in 2006".
