Russia to lay gas pipeline from Kazakhstan to Pakistan
News Report
In a major development, Pakistan is in talks with Russia to lay a gas pipeline from Kazakhstan.
Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar on Saturday stated this while addressing a press conference.
We are working at substitutes as the local reserves were depleting and the government has introduced a law to mix imported and local gas,” he said while addressing a news conference here.
He said that they were discussing with Russia to bring a gas pipeline from Kazakhstan.
This gas will be expensive than local gas. So, this will require a pricing mechanism.
He said that the government had recently introduced legislation of weighted average price of gas. The government had no legislation earlier to price gas if LNG is mixed with indigenous gas.
National Assembly has passed this law now on Friday and this is a historical moment. We will now pursue it in Senate, he added.
He said the present government has introduced historic reforms in different sectors including energy.
He highlighted that the state bank bill was essential in wake of politically motivated damage done to the economy by the finance minister of the last government.
The energy minister also talked about the state bank bill and said that this legislation would free the central bank from politicized decisions.
“Now we have market-based exchange rates and the reserves are not used to maintain the exchange rates artificially,” Mr Azhar said adding, the exports are being made competitive.
He rejected the impression that it was any risk to the national security and pointed out that the Governor, Deputy Governor, and Board of Directors of the Central Bank would be appointed by the government.
He added that there was no need to give the political color to the bill granting autonomy to a state bank, and said that even the PML-N tried to present such a bill in 2015 but did not follow it themselves.
Energy Minister said that Pakistan had not been performing well over the FATF compliance, the country has been on the black list, and on the grey list several times, but the reforms taken by the present government have been acknowledged by the world. 26 out of the 27 reform agendas have been achieved by the government in a record time.
He highlighted other reforms taken by the government which included separation of customs from the FBR and tax policy, and it has resulted in the imports of cheap raw material.
The Minister for energy said the government is focusing on improving transparency in the electricity generation as well as the transmission system.
“The previous governments made decisions on the take or pay basis giving enormous risk-free benefits to the investors of their choice,” the energy minister said adding, “But now we have introduced transparency in the whole affair, through a competitive open auction system.”
He added that the former government focused primarily on power generation and not much focus was on the transmission systems, which created bottlenecks in the electricity supply.
“The maximum electricity transmission in the last era was 20,800 megawatt, but we already crossed the 24,800 MW mark last summer and in 2023, the electricity transmission would be more than 30,000 MW,”he added.
“As far as the issue of fuel cost adjustment is concerned, it was due to too much reliance on imported fuel and that is because of lack of long term policy-making by the previous governments,” Azhar said adding, “Between 70 and 80 percent of electricity will be produced from indigenous resources by 2030, either from the hydel resources, renewal or local fuel.”
Responding to a question about the complaints by Sindh province regarding the SSGC, the minister said that the provincial government there has always used the Sindh card and is used to making non-serious statements.
“Sindh was already consuming the majority of gas produced in that province,” he said adding that the industries in Punjab were consuming gas at five times the rate applicable to industries in Sindh.
