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Islamabad: Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani chaired a meeting at the PM House here today in which the Acting Chairman OGRA informed that the government was actively engaged to pave the way for the import of 500 MCCF Liquefied 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 utilization 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 apprised that the Authority will have to built 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 Organization 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 finalized shortly.
The Prime Minister directed the Chairman PQA to gear up his Organization 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, Mr.Naveed Qamar, Minister for Water and Power, Dr.Asim Hussain Minister for Petroleum, Mola Bux Chandio, Minister for law and Deputy Chairman Planning Commission Dr. Nadeem-ul-Haq and the Secretaries of the respective Ministries including the Senior officials of OGRA, State Bank of Pakistan, Ministry of Petroleum, Law Division and the Minister of Finance.
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