MULTAN City News

Country not to import fertilisers this year: minister

Says we were heading towards charter of economy

which will be acceptable to all political forces

From Our Correspondent

MULTAN: Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has said that Pakistan will not import fertilisers this year and gas will be supplied to all fertilisers’ factories to meet domestic demand.

Addressing a meeting at the Multan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which was chaired by MCCI president Fareed Mughis Sheikh, the minister said that the government had ended the fleecing of LPG importers and now domestic gas cylinder would be available at Rs 700/800 in winter. He said that we had established a new company ‘Pakistan Energy’, which would sign PSA with IPPs and industries. Commenting on the proposal of merger of the NEPRA and the OGRA, the minister said it was not possible because there were manifold problems in two sectors, however, he said that he was in its favour. Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said that we were heading towards charter of economy, which would be acceptable to all political forces while more LNG based agreements would be signed with Qatar. Khaqan Abbasi said that imported LNG was only cheaper source to meet the country’s energy requirements with saving massively to the national kitty. The minister said that the LNG was a game changer and the 400 mmcfd LNG terminal would add five per cent to the country’s primary energy. Khaqan Abbasi said that the government was displacing oil products and LNG price at 15 per cent of Brent index of $50 per cent would be $7.5 per MMBTU. He said that Pakistan needs to import natural gas through pipelines or LNG, but in fact Iran-Pakistan Pipeline of 750 mmcfd project was delayed due to international sanctions and the first gas could not be available before the end of 2017. In addition, Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline with 1325 mmcfd also got delayed due to Afghanistan instability and structural issues with the project transaction and first gas could not be available before 2019, he added. In such situation, he continued, the government ventured into the LNG import through long-term contracts, medium term contracts and sport purchases. He added that the LNG supply contract (SPA) between Pakistan State Oil (PSO) was finalised. He said that cost calculations proved that RLNG was a cheaper than all imported fuels and the OGRA had determined RLNG price of 8.64 per MMBTU. He said that 14 LNG cargoes had so far been re-gasified at the LNG terminal, adding that one-year contractual commitment was 24 cargoes, but the number could go up in one year to 26 cargoes. The minister said that six cargoes were procured on spot basis from Qatar gas FOB basis and eight cargoes were procured through competitive bid process, adding that average price of LNG cargoes procured was less than 14 per cent of Brent. He said that power generation based on 4.000 mmcfd of re-gasified RLNG would generate additional annual generation of nine billion KWH. Similarly, he added, with under construction 3,600MW RLNG based power plants would generate 30 billion KWH. The minister told that they were providing 300,000 gas connections annually as permitted by the OGRA, however, we would end the backlog of urgent gas connection cases by the end of June 2016. He said that Pakistan was trying to resolve the problems of tail-end domestic as well as commercial consumers. The minister said that Rs 150 billion were being spent on gas pipeline from the GIDC. The minister claimed that during the current tenure of the PML-N government, record 227 wells had been drilled, which resulted in 71 new oil and gas discoveries. With the new discoveries, he said, over one trillion cubic feet (TCF) of gas and 16 million of barrels of new oil reserves had been added to the system. Under various steps, around 560 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) of additional gas and 27,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil had been injected in the system so far due to the government’s effective policies, the minister added.