Pakistan Sets Up Shale Oil, Gas Centre
Pakistan’s ministry of petroleum and natural resources has established a shale gas and oil centre to facilitate companies in exploiting the unconventional hydrocarbon resources, state owned news agency, Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) said June 20.
The south Asian nation has technically recoverable resources of about 188 trillion ft3 of shale gas and 58bn stock tank barrels of shale oil in lower and middle Indus basin.
Officials told APP that a consortium of Oil and Gas Development Company and Pakistan Petroleum is being formed to undertake pilot projects to determine cost of extracting shale gas and oil.
Pakistan has seen significant decline in locally produced gas in recent years. Which shortage of gas, the government has relied on imported LNG to fill the demand gap. The country has one LNG import terminal at Port Qasim and few other floating units are expected to come online in next few years.
Although government has said that LNG will now be an important part of country’s energy mix, it has also been encouraging energy firms to explore for domestic gas resources.
Shardul Sharma