Another alarming situation looms over Pakistan as the country’s oil reserves are expected to deplete during the next 10 years. Gas reserves are also expected to diminish after 13 years, if they are being used up at the current pace.
These alarming statistics were shared with the the Senate Standing Committee on Petroleum recently by officials at the Petroleum division. The meeting discussed the current state of reserves and was attended by several senators including officials from SNGPL, PSO, and SSGCL.
The Secretary (Petroleum) informed the Committee about the current state of the country’s oil and gas reserves. As per him, the current reserves stand at the following figures against their total demand in the country:
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The current demand for gas stands at 1000 million cubic feet per day which is expected to go up to 3,600 by 2030. As for the petroleum products, domestic production only meets 15% of the total demand. The country used 26.4 million tonnes of petroleum products in 2016-17 with 85% of it being imported.
Pakistan has a total of 8.8 million gas consumers with an annual addition of 0.5 million consumers. The Senate committee was informed that the government had collected $167.45 billion as petroleum levy during the 2016-17 fiscal year. Other than that, Rs 45 billion were collected on account of terminal capacity since 2015.
The Senate Committee didn’t seem happy about this collection and sought further details on the LNG agreement with Qatar. Details to be provided include the prevailing gas prices on the market at the time of bidding, as well as the companies that participated in the bidding process.
Via Profit
