Page 11 - AsianOil Week 40

AsianOil SOUTH ASIA AsianOil

Pakistan seeks digital answer

to upstream dilemma

POLICY PAKISTANI Prime Minister Imran Khan has
thrown his weight behind a new digital manage-
ment system for the upstream sector, amid fall-
ing crude oil reserves and a rising dependency
on natural gas imports.
During a committee meeting covering the
oil and gas sector last week, Khan said the gov-
ernment’s exploration management system
(EMS) would help boost access to domestic
oil and gas reserves. This, he said on October
2, would help cut government spending on
energy supplies while driving down oil and
gas prices for the public.
The Pakistani Petroleum Division unveiled
the EMS in August, describing it at the time as
a multi-user geographic information systems
(GIS) database application that would allow the
Directorate of Petroleum Concession to access
real-time upstream data. The system was devel-
oped in collaboration of international oil and gas
technology company LMKR.
The government department noted that EMS
contained a “planned vs actual” wells dashboard
that would allow the government to monitor
company performance against their commit-
ments as well as a daily and weekly field pro- quoted Topline Securities CEO Muhammad
duction dashboard. The government’s focus on Sohail as saying.
technology comes as the country’s oil reserves The executive noted 1.82mn barrels of
continue to decline, while national gas reserves reserves were added at the Kandiari, Ranjho,
flatline. Dhok Hussain, Benari and Yasar fields, while
Pakistan’s net oil reserves had declined by Makori East reserves climbed by 2.9mn barrels
5% to 540mn barrels by the end of June, local and Shahdadpur increased by 7.57mn barrels.
brokerage house Topline Securities reported in However, the gains were offset by a 14mn barrel
mid-September. drop at Makhdumpur Deep field.
Pakistan produced 13.2mn barrels during the Pakistan produced 634bn cubic feet (18bn
first half of the year, local media outlet The News cubic metres) of gas during the six-month
period, but was able to completely replace the
output, Sohail said, pointing to a 332.5 bcf gain
at Shahdadpur, 149 bcf at Miano and 30 bcf at
Buzdar South.
The government has set a financial year
2020-2021 oil production target of 31.12mn
barrels and a gas production target of 1.58 tril-
lion cubic feet.
Islamabad’s efforts to boost the domestic
upstream come as the country gears up to buy
more spot liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes.
State-owned Pakistan LNG Ltd (PLL) said on
its website this week that it was seeking up to six
cargoes for December, ahead of the country’s
winter demand spike. PLL has set a November
2 deadline for bids to be submitted, noting that
it wanted each cargo to deliver 140,000 cubic
metres of the fuel.
The deliveries – if they all go ahead – will
be the most the country has ever handled in
a single month, an unnamed PLL source told
Reuters on October 5.™

Week 40 08•October•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P11