Government to offer 35 offshore sites for oil, gas exploration.

Pakistan has decided to auction 35 offshore sites next month for drilling to find oil and gas reserves in a major move to step up hydrocarbon production and meet growing demand.

The decision came after public-sector companies including Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDC), in a joint venture with Italy's Eni and US energy giant ExxonMobil, made efforts to discover oil and gas deposits at an offshore site in the Arabian Sea near Karachi. However, they could not find anything but were able to collect data that could be useful for upcoming offshore ventures.

In addition to the 35 offshore sites, the government is poised to auction 10 onshore sites for hydrocarbon exploration, starting December 2019, said Power and Petroleum Minister Omar Ayub Khan in a meeting with German Ambassador Bernhard Schlagheck on Friday.

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Petroleum Nadeem Babar was also present in the meeting.

The minister emphasised that Pakistan's energy sector was developing fast as it was offering around $60-billion market for renewable energy generation, transmission and distribution along with the petroleum sub-sector, which offered huge oil and gas exploration opportunities at around 40 new sites. Auction for these sites would be held next month.

He pointed out that for the first time provinces in Pakistan had been given a major and leading role in decision-making on new renewable energy projects as well as project...

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