Khaqan urges Chinese oil, gas companies to explore investment opportunities

Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Wednesday invited the Chinese oil and gas sector companies to explore multiple investment opportunities in different fields of the petroleum sector of Pakistan.

During a meeting with Nur Bekri, Administrator, National Energy Administration (NEA) and his delegation, the Minister said, “Chinese companies can invest in oil and gas exploration and production, setting up a large deep conversion mid-country oil refinery, laying of gas, crude oil and white oil pipelines, oil storages facilities, and supply of petroleum products.”

The Minister appreciated the fact that, “The Governments of Pakistan and China have joined hands to address the energy crisis and to provide relief to the people and industry of Pakistan.”

He highlighted the dynamics of the petroleum sector of Pakistan and informed the delegation that, “Oil and gas sector is a completely market based, economically viable and sustainable sector.”

He added that, “Pakistan is expected to grow to a 30 MTPA LNG market within 5 years and a regulatory regime for LNG providing full third-party access has been developed and several major investments from private sector Terminal developers and LNG producers are in the pipeline.”

The Minister proposed that, “The Petroleum sector projects can be developed under BOOT or EPCF modes by Chinese companies under G2G sectoral framework agreements.”

Nur Bekri applauded the recent progress achieved by Pakistan in addressing energy shortages in the country through setting up LNG and coal fired power plants.

He stated that, “The Government of China would encourage both the state owned and private sector oil and gas companies of China to come forward for exploring multiple avenues of opportunities available in the petroleum sector of Pakistan.”

He said, “In order to facilitate the identified and future oil and gas sector projects both sides agreed that an Oil and Gas Sub-Group be established under the Energy Working Group.”

Sikandar Sultan Raja, Secretary Petroleum and other senior officials of the Ministry were also present during the meeting.