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ISLAMABAD: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Pakistan are likely to set up a new oil refinery in the Balochistan port of Gwadar with significant investment, the newly appointed oil ministers called a key meeting on Monday.
According to sources, newly appointed oil minister Mohammad Mahmoud has been working to complete the construction of a new refinery in the country with huge investments from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The current oil minister has been consulting relevant local stakeholders before finalizing a deal to build a new refinery in the country, they said. And, in this regard, a virtual meeting with Saudi Aramco is scheduled for Monday in the oil sector. They said former Prime Minister Shahid Hakakan Abbasi, Minister of State (Ministry of Oil) Musaddiq Masood Malik, Minister of Oil, Pakistan State Oil Company (PSO) and Pakistan Oil Refinery Company Limited (PARCO) General Manager (Petroleum), Managing Director (MD)) will attend this meeting. On Tuesday last week, the current oil minister also convened a meeting to discuss the topic, former Prime Minister Shahid Haqqan Abbasi, Minister of State (Oil Ministry) Musaddiq Masood Malik, senior oil ministry officials, general The meeting was attended by Attock Refinery Limited (ARL), Pakistan Refinery Limited (PRL) and Pak Arab Refinery Limited (PARCO), the officer (oil), general manager sources said.
In order to implement the investment and construction of new refineries by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, the newly appointed Minister of Petroleum, Captain Mohammad Mahmoud (R), has been vigorously promoting the early introduction of a new policy on refining in 2022, sources added.
The UAE had earlier planned with PARCO to build a deep-conversion, state-of-the-art refinery at Hub, a town in Balochistan, with a capacity of 500,000 barrels per day, and Saudi Arabia has also shown interest in the oil, the sources said. An oil refinery will be built at the deep-water port of Gwadar in Pakistan, with a refining capacity of 500,000-600,000 barrels per day. But they added that Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Pakistan are likely to jointly build a new refinery in Pakistan with a capacity of 500,000 barrels per day, as there is no capacity in the system for two new refineries.
Currently, there are five players in Pakistan’s oil refining industry, including Pak-Arab Refinery Limited (PARCO), Attock Refinery Limited (ARL), National Refinery Limited (NRL), Pakistan Refinery Limited (PRL) and Cnergyico Pk Limited (CPL). All refineries are hydro-skimming refineries except PARCO, which is a light conversion refinery.
Pakistan’s refining capacity is about 450,000 barrels per day (bpd), equivalent to 20 million tons per year.
Product catalogs typically include energy products, namely naphtha, motor gasoline (MS), high-speed diesel (HSD), furnace oil (FO), kerosene, jet fuel (JP-1 and JP-8), high-octane blends Components (HOBC), Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), Light Diesel Oil (LDO) and Non-Energy Products.
Historically, local refineries have supplied about 60% of the country’s diesel needs, 30% of motor gasoline and 100% of defense aviation fuel. The rest is imported as refined products. Pakistan has been importing large quantities of petrochemicals, worth over $2 billion a year, as Pakistan has no major petrochemical production facilities.
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