KARACHI: Director General Oil of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources Abdul Jabbar Memon on Friday said that the government is not going to stop using furnace oil for energy generation but will only rely on local supplies and stop its import.

He was presiding over a monthly product review meeting held at Byco oil refinery.

This is being done, he said, in order to give sufficient time to oil refineries to upgrade and shift to new technologies.

He said that monthly product review meetings estimate the country’s POL demand and also evaluate how much would be available from local refineries so that deficit could be met through imports.

The Byco’s Vice President Asad Azhar Siddiqui, speaking on the occasion, said that presently two refineries having a capacity of 35,000 barrels and 120,000bpd are housed over 700 acres of land.

He stressed that once imports of furnace oil is reduced, Byco will gradually increase its production. The overall country’s demand of furnace oil is 27m tonnes and out of this 40pc is produced by Byco and balance of 60pc is imported.

Published in Dawn, March 10th, 2018