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ENI, PPL start offshore oil, gas exploration [The News] 09 Feb, 2010
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| |  | | ENI, PPL start offshore oil, gas exploration | | | | Tuesday, February 09, 2010
By By Salman Siddiqui
| KARACHI: Though Pakistan has never been successful in exploring oil and gas reserves in offshore areas in the country it is once again making all efforts to achieve the goal in the Arabian Sea.
The ENI Pakistan and Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) have joined hands and started drilling Shark-1 offshore well on January 17. Total cost of the project is estimated at $44 million. The Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Syed Naveed Qamar said this at a press conference on Monday after returning from the drilling site.
Shark-1 is located in Indus M Block in the Arabian Sea, which is 87 kilometres southwest of Karachi. The block is a joint venture between ENI of Italy having a 70 per cent working interest and PPL with 30 per cent share.
It would take around eight to 10 weeks to drill the well to the depth of approximately 3,540 metres and then they would know about the results of the operation, the minister said and expected exploration of gas reserves from the site.
Although we havent yet been successful, this time we will achieve desired results by getting gas reserves from an offshore site like we have been successful in onshore exploration, Qamar expressed the hope.He said that the next round of auctioning and awarding exploration licences to the concerned companies would be held in June-2010.
Replying to a question, minister said that the people of the area of all projects (including Shark-1) would be given first priority of availing job opportunity if the drilling site discovers energy reserves.
According to the new petroleum policy, the people of the area and then of city and province would be offered first opportunity of joining the project as manpower. If the required number of people are not available, outsiders would be hired for these projects, he said.
Under the new constitutional guidelines, provinces have been given the complete hold on their natural resources like Sindh was given full authority to explore coal from Thar Coal. Likewise, Balochistan is authorised to re-negotiate and re-sign exploration agreements with Reko Diq and Saindak Pakistan Limited, he apprised.
IP gas pipeline agreement this month: Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources, Syed Naveed Qamar has said that the country is going to sign an agreement with Iran to start work on Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline. The accord will be signed by the end of February in Istanbul.
Minister added that a Pakistan delegation has recently returned from Iran after working with their counterparts on the gas line issue. Moreover, another Pakistani team was about to leave for Iran to set the remaining modalities of IP agreement, he added.
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