ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The Minister for Petroleum Omar Ayub Khan has said that the ground breaking of the Khalifa Point Refinery project will be performed by end of this year.
In a statement on Saturday, Omar Ayub said that this US$ 8 billion project is a joint venture of Pak Arab Refinery Limited (PARCO) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The minister said that the refinery will have an output capacity of 250,000 barrels per day.
Omar Ayub Khan further said that the federal government will announce a new oil and gas exploration and production policy in the next few months.
The petroleum minister said that we will also initiate auction of 40 new oil and gas blocks from December 2019, which will generate good activity in Oil and Gas sector.
Separately in a series of tweets, Omar Ayub Khan said that the generation number given by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) includes projects started by the previous government.
The minister said that the projects initiated and completed during the PML-N government were on imported fuels, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and imported coal. He said that they blocked renewable energy projects at the end & no work was done on transmission and distribution.
Omar Ayub further said that if all was being managed so well, why did Rs 450 billion Circular Debt get added in one year alone, and why was Rs 226 billion of prior year cost was kept hidden and not passed on.
“That is the reason for the current price increase. Facts don’t lie. Shame!!,” he said.
“Why did power theft and losses increase, rather than decrease during PML-N’s tenure?? Audited numbers. Facts don’t lie. Shame!! At this rate PML-N will want to take credit for ‘Nazraia-e-Pakistan’!!”.
The petroleum minister said that in summer 2018 when PML-N was in the government we faced over 3000MW of transmission constraints and over 2500MW distribution constraints. He said that if all was well, why did we have heavy load shedding in last Ramazan in all major cities and crippling load shedding in rural areas??
