22 oil, gas discoveries made in 2 years, NA told: The News

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Syed Naveed Qamar on Monday informed the National Assembly (NA) that a total 59 onshore and offshore exploration wells were drilled in the country from January 2008 onwards.

Responding to a question during the question hour session, he said 22 oil and gas discoveries were made during the period. Out of these 18 were under appraisal, whereas four discoveries had been initially appraised having a reserve of 3.27 million barrels of oil and 404 billion cubic feet of gas.

He said the government had granted 126 exploration licenses to different companies for exploration of petroleum in Pakistan. Present indigenous production of crude oil is 66,390 barrels per day (BPD) which is processed at local refineries in Pakistan, he added. Qamar said in order to meet the demand of petroleum products, Khlifa Coastal Oil Refinery Project with a capacity of 250,000 BPD and Byco Petroleum Pakistan limited Refinery project with capacity of 115,000 BPD are proposed to be set up near Hub, Balochistan.

To another question of Qudsia Arshad, the Minister said in order to ensure that the maximum benefit of the subsidy went to the low income consumers, it was decided to allow the lower price benefit of only two preceding slabs for any particular consumer. He said that in this way, the consumers falling in first three slabs were not affected by this mechanism whereas through economic measures high gas consumption was discouraged.

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