Venezuela offers crude oil to Pakistan

KARACHI: Venezuela has offered to supply crude oil to Pakistan as part of efforts to develop cooperation in the energy sector, The News learnt on Wednesday.

The offer from Venezuela was received recently when Pakistan’s ambassador met the leadership of the North American country.

An official communication sent from the Pakistani envoy in Venezuela revealed that he had the opportunity to meet the leadership of the country, which expressed its desire to develop cooperation with Pakistan in the energy sector.

“Despite the international sanctions against Venezuela, the country has the ways and means to export oil to Pakistan,” the official correspondence disclosed.

Following the offer from the Venezuelan side, Pakistan’s Petroleum Division held a meeting with the country’s oil sector on Wednesday, in which it was apprised about the offer from the North American country.

However, representatives of Pakistan’s oil sector told the officials of the Petroleum Division to seek the specifications of the crude oil, offered by Venezuela to determine whether the local refineries have the capacity to process this type of crude. Sources in the sector said that as far as Venezuelan crude was concerned, it was believed to be heavy crude oil, which cannot be processed in the local refineries. “Oil sector asked the ministry to seek the details as to whether light crude oil is available in the North American country in order to move forward on this offer,” sources said.

Pakistan has been making efforts to buy cheaper crude oil from other sources, as the price of the commodity in the global market was much higher. Pakistan is also in talks with Russia on crude import after the previous government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had first announced that it was considering to import crude oil from Russia.

Later, the present government also worked on it when a delegation led by State Minister of Petroleum Mussadiq Malik visited Russia in November last year. That was followed by the Russian side holding talks with Pakistan in the middle of January this year as part of broader economic framework partnership between the two countries.

However, pricing of Russian crude oil is yet to be determined. Although the government is hopeful of Russian oil supply in March, sources believed that it was not feasible yet because of the rate as well as other modalities had to be finalised.