ROME, Oct 13: Pakistan next week will invite international firms to bid for a project to build the country's first plant to import liquefied natural gas (LNG), part of a plan to boost supplies to meet demand in one of the world's fast growing economies, a gas industry manager said on Friday.

“We want to attract world class LNG players,” Munawar B. Ahmed, managing director of Sui Southern Gas Company Ltd (SSGC), told an LNG conference.

He said Pakistan wanted to appoint a project developer in the first quarter of 2007. SSGC, which is majority owned by the government, would take an equity stake in the project, he said.

Current plans envisage the plant starting up in 2010-11. The plant is expected to have an initial import capacity of 3.5 million tons a year of LNG. It will turn the frozen LNG back into normal gas for piping to consumers.

The project would cost $300-$400 million, another industry source said.

Pakistan, which has its own gas fields, expects to have a supply deficit as soon as 2008. Plans to import LNG and pipeline gas from Iran and Turkmenistan are based on projected gas demand growth of about 6.5 per cent a year.—Reuters