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ISLAMABAD, May 4: Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz on Tuesday said that Pakistan's energy policy was extremely viable and provided attractive opportunities for investors to explore oil and gas reserves in the country.
Addressing the 2nd Pakistan Oil and Gas Conference 2004 here, the finance minister said that Pakistan was providing a level-playing field for all investors and energy was one of the priority areas for foreign investment.
"With the increasing growth in Pakistan expected to be at around six per cent in this financial year, the demand for energy resources is growing, providing attractive opportunities for investors to meet the domestic energy requirements," he remarked.
Mr Aziz said that wide ranging reforms had accelerate the economic activities and expressed his confidence of yielding sound and solid result in different sectors, besides improving economic growth in the country.
He said the actions to improve competitiveness, tax reforms, financial sector reforms, and transparency would further strengthen economy, besides creating conducive atmospheres of local and foreign investment.
The minister said improving competitiveness of Pakistan's industries was an important challenge, which would receive greater attention of the government over the medium-term.
EXPLORATORY WELLS: Petroleum and Natural Resources Minister Nouraiz Shakoor said that a plan was underway to drill 100 exploratory wells during a year. The minister said the government was also planning to enhance the level of oil production from 64,000 to 1,00,000 barrels and gas from three to five billion cubic feet per day in next ten years.
Mr Shakoor said oil and gas emerged as one of the most prospective areas for private investors, which attracted over a billion dollars investment in the last one-and-a-half year.
The minister said that the government was actively considering bridging the supply and demand gap of oil and gas, and concrete steps were being taken to exploit the untapped hydrocarbon resources.
He said that substitution of imported oil with indigenous fuels would reduce the overall trade deficit. He said that a coastal refinery capacity of six million tons of oil per year would be set up at an estimated cost of $1.5 billion, besides gas storages at Murree and Northern Areas.
The petroleum minister said that the decision to approve economic feasibility of more than $3 billion mega gas import projects from Turkmenistan, Iran and Qatar was on card.
He said that gas import project had tremendous scope for long-term foreign investment as the project life was over 25 year and the payback period of around eight years. The economic feasibility would adopt and implement in a uniform legal and regulatory framework for these projects.
He assured: "We will take all necessary lawful measures to ensure the safety of pipeline for continuous supply of gas." The Central Board of Revenue chairman has stressed the need to increase oil and gas production by uncapping existing resources to help overcome shortage.
"We should expedite exploration strive to increase indigenous oil production from 63,000 barrel per day (bpd) to 100,000 bpd." He added that gas production should also be enhanced to 4.2 billion cubic feet per day by considering depletion of existing reserve and additions of about nine tcf new reserves.
The CBR chief also stressed the need of 10-12 million tons coal per year production from Thar for the generation of 1200 mw power. The conference was organized by Petroleum Institute of Pakistan and managed by Mediators. -APP
