Pakistan gets large reserves of oil and gas after nine months of discovery
Pakistan has got a new reserves of oil and gas. This store has been discovered in the Mamikhel well of Taal block in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. According to Pakistan’s leading newspaper Express Tribune, Pakistan’s dependence on imports to meet its energy needs will decrease once this new reserves are found. This will also reduce Pakistan’s expenditure on imports.
Pakistan Oilfields Limited (POL) said in a notification issued to the Pakistan Stock Exchange on Tuesday, testing of oil and gas wells showed that it has a capacity to produce 3240 barrels of oil per day and 16.12 million standard cubic feet of gas.
Pakistan produced 85000 barrels of oil per day in March 2020. However, Pakistan meets 80 per cent of its oil needs only through imports.
Pakistan produces less than 4 billion cubic feet of gas per day, whereas its requirement is 7 billion cubic feet. Pakistan is also dependent on imports to meet gas demand.
According to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), Pakistan imports $ 9.8 billion to meet its energy requirement, which is about one-fourth of its total imports. (Record for the last 11 months). Pakistan has imported a total of 40.86 billion dollars from last July to May.
According to the brokerage house, excavation work of Mamikhel South-01 was started in October 2019 and excavated to a depth of 4939 meters on 23 May 2020. After that hydrocarbon deposits were detected.
About a year ago, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had hoped to get Asia’s largest oil reserves in Pakistan. Imran Khan had said that if this huge stock is found in Pakistan then the destiny of the country will change. However, even after digging more than 6000 feet in the Kekra-1 field, no oil reserves were found.
Pakistan’s Minister for Maritime Affairs and Foreign Affairs Abdullah Hussain Harun claimed that the potential reserves of oil would be much larger than the oil reserves of Kuwait. Pakistani officials had estimated that Pakistan’s oil reserves could cross 100 billion barrels. Saudi Arabia has an estimated 266 billion barrels of certified oil reserves.
In March 2019, PM Imran Khan said that he will soon share a good news with the country. The Pakistani PM had also appealed to his countrymen to pray that all hopes regarding the oil reserves should be proved true. However, in the end, Imran Khan was disappointed. Some critics said that the government is deliberately making such claims to create an investment climate.
