ISLAMABAD - The amount worth Rs 1.16 billion, payable by the armed forces to the Pakistan State Oil (PSO), has placed it as the third biggest among the government power customers after WAPDA and PIA.
The corporation, PSO, owns dues amounting to Rs168.683 billion against government and non-government customers collectively. The payables by the government customers and non-government customers to PSO are Rs38.792 billion and Rs115.684 billion respectively.
On Friday, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Dr Asim Hussain informed this to the Upper House of the Parliament in his written reply during the question hour session.
Replying to several supplementary questions, Dr Asim said that the Ministry of Finance had assured him that the outstanding dues would be cleared within a period of one month.
To another question, he said, the demand and supply gap of gas would swell in winter season, resultantly the country would face gas shortage, however, the burden would be shared equally among all the provinces on equitable basis.
He said that at present the gas demand stands at eight billion cubic feet (BCF) while the production is around 4.2 BCF.
To another question, he said that presently 133 exploration licences have been granted for exploration of oil and gas in the country besides signing exploration licences of over 30 blocks during the last year.
He said that an agreement was signed with Iran for the import of 750 MSCFD of natural gas and the project would be completed in three years.
The Minister said that the country has estimated recoverable tight gas reserves of 24 TCF while initially 100 to 150 MMCFD would be added depending on its success rate.
To another question, Asim said that owing to the sanctions imposed by the US on Iran, Pakistan’s refinery was facing difficulties in opening Letter of Credit (LC). He informed that Pakistan was not importing oil from Iran.