Work on Khalifa oil refinery project soon

ISLAMABAD: Work on the multibillion dollar abandoned Khalifa Coastal Oil Refinery project would start soon, officials in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources said on Wednesday.

In a bid to achieve self-reliance in the oil production sector, they told APP that the Pakistan Arab Refinery Company (Parco) had been given the task to complete the project, which was stopped during the previous government.

The project approved in October 2007 was suspended several times due to paucity of funds, the officials added.

Parco will complete the refinery having capacity to process 250,000 barrels oil per day, equal to 13 million tons of petroleum products per annum, they said.

The officials said that concerted efforts are being made for groundbreaking of the project at the earliest, adding that the refinery would be completed in a period of three to five years.

Presently, 70 percent of the current oil demand was met through imports and the government had planned to set up more oil refineries in the coming days.  The government has allotted 1,000 acres of land in Balochistan for the refinery.