State-owned energy company Pakistan Petroleum Ltd (PPL) is reclaiming land from the sea to create a launchpad to ramp up oil and gas exploration, US outlet Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

Citing PPL’s General Manager Exploration and Core Business Development, Arshad Palekar, Bloomberg reported that the artificial island will be created about 30 kilometres off the coast of Sindh, near Sujawal. He said this on the sidelines of an oil and gas conference in Islamabad.

“Planned with a height of six feet, the platform will prevent high tides from interrupting round-the-clock exploration work,” he said.

Pakistan’s drilling efforts are gaining fresh momentum after United States President Donald Trump indicated an interest in the country’s “massive oil reserves” in a social media post in July.

Since then, Islamabad has awarded offshore exploration licenses to local companies PPL, Mari Energies Ltd and Prime International Oil and Gas Company.

“The project, a first for Pakistan, builds on Abu Dhabi’s experience, where artificial islands for drilling have been successfully built,” Palekar said.

Construction of the island will be completed in February, and operation will start immediately after, according to Palekar. The company aims to drill around 25 wells.

Vitol and Cnergyico, Pakistan’s largest oil refiner, delivered the country’s biggest single shipment of very low sulphur fuel oil (VLSFO) for ship refuelling, the global trading firm said in a statement late Monday.

This shipment came from Cnergyico’s first large-scale batch of fuel that meets International Maritime Organisation (IMO) low-sulphur rules. The company began producing it after importing its first US crude oil cargoes earlier this year.

The move will enable large vessels refuelling in Pakistan to now sail longer routes from east to west without needing to stop elsewhere, while also giving the country a stronger local supply of environmentally compliant marine fuel.