Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani chaired a meeting here on Tuesday in which the Minister for Petroleum, Dr Asim Hussain informed that his Ministry was actively engaged to pave the way for the import of 500 MCCF Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) on an emergent basis, which will be exclusively used for the generation of 2500MW electricity in the country.
The import of LNG and its utilisation infrastructure is expected to be completed by the third quarter of next year, the Minister said. In addition, a separate pipeline meant for the creation of increased capacity for transportation of gas from Port Qasim Authority to Punjab province is also in hand and work is progressing satisfactorily.
The Chairman of the Port Qasim Authority said that the Authority would have to build three terminals with an estimated cost of 500 million dollars to cope with the handling of the import of such a huge quantity of LNG. He said that his Organisation was fully prepared to undertake the project after meeting the normal mandatory legal requirements and the imperatives of cost effectiveness of the project. He said that PQA was already working with interested investors for the development of Jetty and terminal facilities for handling LNG and implementation of agreement in this regard will be finalised shortly.
The Prime Minister directed the Chairman PQA to gear up his Organisation to cope with the energy shortages issues for which all necessary measures be taken to ensure early import of the LNG. The meeting was attended by the Minister for Finance, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Naveed Qamar, Minister for Water and Power, Dr Asim Hussain Minister for Petroleum, and Mola Bux Chandio, Minister for law and the Secretaries of the respective Ministries including the Senior officials of OGRA, Ministry of Petroleum Law Division and the Ministry of Finance.-PR
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