KARACHI, May 19: All the refineries have initiated work on reducing sulphur content in diesel to 0.05 per cent in order to comply with Euro-II specification aimed at reducing air pollution caused by vehicles.

They have geared up efforts to make heavy investment ranging between $700-800 million depending on the scope of work.

The government has been forcing the refineries on this project in order to make the environment clean, especially in the urban areas, where diesel is highly consumed by the transport sector.

“The project will take at least three to four years for completion and hopefully, by end of 2011 diesel will contain only 0.05 per cent sulphur content,” general manager Commercial and Corporate Affairs Pakistan Refinery Limited (PRL) Aftab Husain told Dawn on Monday.

He said currently the country’s specification for diesel content is one per cent. Total diesel consumption in Pakistan is 7.5 million tons, of which 4.5 million tons is being imported every year with 0.5 per cent sulphur content.

Local refineries produce three million tons of diesel, which has 0.7-0.8 per cent of sulphur content.

He said that only PRL was investing more than $300 million while Pak Arab Refinery Limited (Parco), National Refinery Limited (NRL) and Attock Refinery Limited (ARL) had also initiated work on this project with huge investment.

These are capital intensive projects and need huge investments. Therefore, it is imperative that the current refinery formula and consistency in the policy should be maintained so that these on- going investments could be materialised well on time, he said.

Mr Aftab said that over $250 million investment was required only for acquiring hydro de-sulphurisation plant and other accessories from the US and Europe. He said consultants, vendors, contractors and plant manufacturers all over the world were already booked for various oil and gas projects in upstream and downstream sectors.

He said the project like hydro de-sulphurisation took 36-48 months from front and engineering design, equipment procurement and construction phase up to commissioning.

Managing Director of Bosicor Pakistan Limited Mohammad Wasi Khan said his refinery was also making a big investment on this project.