Tawanai

Associate Press of Pakistan reports that the Japanese government has agreed to provide a grant of Yen 480,000,000 (US $5.4 million) to Pakistan for “Introduction of Clean Energy by Solar Electricity Generation System” programme. An agreement to this effect was signed here on Thursday by Secretary, Economic Affairs Division, Sibtain Fazal Halim and Ambassador of Japan in Pakistan, Chihiro Atsumi on behalf of their respective governments.

Among others, Head of Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA), also witnessed the signing ceremony. Under the Clean Energy Initiative, two on-grid solar power generation systems (100 KW each) will be installed under grant-aid through JICA, one at Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) and other at roof of Planning Commission’s building.

The project will promote clean energy utilisation and will help achieve emission reduction by installing the new system that would be connected to the national grid. The system is expected to reduce the gas emission, by replacing the part of electric power generated by fossil fuel and contribute to the climate change policy of Pakistan.

This project is first of its kind in the country, which would set precedent as a role model of defining procedures and strategy at the level for on-grid solar power generation. It is expected to become an effective measure to overcome the energy shortage and a motive for utilising solar power, for which there is big scope with relatively less investment.

On the occasion Chihiro Atsumi said that Japan was concerned about the challenges caused by the climate change in Pakistan which has been resulting in receding glaciers and lack of rain fall. During the Copenhagen conference held last month, Japan has committed to reduce the carbon emission, and Pakistan and Japan would try to utilise the solar energy to achieve this goal.

On the occasion, Secretary EAD said that Government of Japan has deep and diversified relations with Pakistan adding that Japan was the biggest donor partner of Pakistan and continued its support in education, health, energy, environment and disaster management.

Japan has also helped in capacity building and institution building in Pakistan, the Secretary added. Speaking on the occasion, Pakistan Engineering Council, Chairperson Rukhsana Zuberi expressed the hope that the launch of this project and the awareness created through media could lead to the solutions of energy problems. This system is economically viable and will also help in income generation, she added.

Clean Technology, Consumers, Energy, Investment, Solar Japan, JICA, Pakistan Engineering Council

India’s state-run oil and gas companies plan to raise their total investment by about a fifth in the next financial year to raise crude output, expand refineries and produce cleaner fuels, a senior government official said Friday.

The companies are likely to end the current fiscal year through March with a total investment of 580.95 billion rupees and plan to spend 694.58 billion rupees ($15 billion) next year, the official, who didn’t wish to be identified, told Dow Jones Newswires.

Indian energy companies are increasing investment to meet rising demand for fuels in the world’s second-fastest growing major economy. India’s top policy think tank, the Planning Commission, has forecast the economy to grow at 9% between April 2007 and March 2012.

The federal government aims to raise spending in the sector to assure energy security through higher local output and investment in oil equity abroad. The South Asian nation currently imports more than three-fourths of its crude oil needs.

Oil & Natural Gas Corp., India’s largest explorer, is likely to raise capital expenditure next year by about 7% to 265.23 billion rupees as it speeds up drilling at exploratory blocks, including the Cauvery and western offshore basins, the official said.

ONGC–which contributed about three quarters of India’s crude oil output and two-thirds of natural gas production in the last fiscal year–hasn’t kept up with output targets as its fields are ageing and it hasn’t brought any new blocks into production for many years.

Energy, Investment, Oil

Oil and Gas Development Company Ltd (OGDCL), Pakistan’s biggest upstream oil and gas exploration company, has big ambitions to go global and invest in ventures around the globe. OGDCL has approached various international companies. Pakistan press has reported that OGDCL has been working to create an accord with Chinese companies China National Petrochemical Company and SINOPEC to explore new investment opportunities in North Africa, Far East and other smaller Arab countries. Interesting that while Pakistan continues to suffer energy problems, giants like OGDCL are planning these deals.

OGDCL forwarded the summary for the proposed joint ventures with Chinese companies to the Ministry of Petroleum, The summary has highlighted that the Chinese companies lack international exposure and modern expertise, which has prevented them from venturing into the overseas exploration sites. Senior manager of the company said that with an experience of around 46 years, OGDCL is technically sound with a highly qualified pool of professionals to undertake and supervise oil and gas exploration activities abroad.

In its quest to gain international exposure OGDCL has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a Ukrainian company to carry out mineral search through latest technology n Pakistan.

The MoU with DGS Global will enable the OGDCL to locate mineral deposits including oil and gas with the support of new technology called the Remote Mineral Search and Prospecting.

This technology enables remote collection of photographs from space of areas under investigation for oil and gas. In the past several agreements were executed in North Africa, Far East, Middle East, Russian States but due to rising cost and difficult government procedures, the plan was derailed to explore these areas.

“The main factor in Algeria was that the fields were not economical and technically viable,” an official of OGDCL said.

The state-owned firm OGDCL had earlier in the year signed a technical cooperation agreement with another public sector E&P firm Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) for technical cooperation in new ventures in Pakistan and abroad.

Senior officials of OGDCL said that the joint venture with PPL would provide the OGDCL access to technical information based on past experience of PPL.

Both the companies had conducted basic studies for operations in Iraq, Yemen, Oman, Algeria and Libya.

While, OGDCL has tried to enter into joint ventures with multinationals like ENI at various operations in North Africa, they lost to Russian giant Gazprom, as the price offered in the bid was too high and with less cash reserves, it was difficult to compete.

Energy, Investment, Oil, Pakistan, Policy joint venture, ogdcl

The Pakistan government is offering investors in the Emirates its stakes in nine corporations, including the country’s largest lender and its biggest oil and gas exploration firm, as it seeks to reduce debt.

Officials from Pakistan’s privatisation commission along with JP Morgan, the lead manager on the project, recently concluded a series of presentations to investment houses including the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, as well as Emirates Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi Investment Corporation and Invest AD.

“Eventually the government will sell all its shareholding,” said Waqar Ahmed Khan, the privatisation minister. “We are doing the number crunching, developing baseline formulas and doing evaluations for a number of projects.”

The holdings in the first batch of companies are expected to be sold within the first half of next year, he said.

The government may sell its holdings in firms including the National Bank of Pakistan, which has assets of more than US$10 billion (Dh36.73bn).

Oil and Gas Development Corporation and Pakistan Petroleum, two oil and gas exploration companies, the energy firms Faisalabad Electricity, Kot Addu Power and Jamshoro Power, Pakistan Post Office and State Life Corporation of Pakistan, the country’s biggest life insurer, are also on offer.

The government is also offering its remaining 42 per cent stake in Habib Bank. The Agha Khan Fund for Economic Development owns the majority stake in Pakistan’s largest private commercial bank.

Via The National, Abu Dhabi

Gas, Investment, Petrol

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during a visit to Pakistan last month, announced $125 million in new aid to upgrade power stations and transmission lines, part of a broader effort to reduce power shortages. Washington hopes such support will help Pakistan’s government make tough decisions, including unpopular increases in electricity tariffs, said one official. The International Monetary Fund’s quarterly report from July 31 on Pakistan’s economic performance recommended three price hikes. The first was on October 1 and according to the IMF, there is agreement for two more.

The United States expects to complete a review on how to spend $7.5 billion in proposed aid for Pakistan by the end of this month, with an early focus on the country’s decrepit energy sector, senior US officials said on Wednesday. Chronic power shortages are a big political issue in Pakistan. They undermine growth potential, economists say, and weaken support for the fragile civilian government.

US officials involved in the review declined to say how $1.5 billion a year in new funds would be allocated but made clear that infrastructure projects, particularly electricity, was an important part of the review. “Energy will be a major focus,” said one senior official. The aid has been signed into law but Congress has yet to appropriate the money. “It (energy shortages) affects people, it affects people’s perception of their government and manufacturing and jobs – everything,” added the official, who according to State Department rules asked not be quoted.

Last month, a US delegation travelled to Pakistan to work out priorities in resolving the energy crisis. The issue is seen as a test of Pakistan’s government, which is battling militants and helping the United States in its fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Source: Business Recorder

Consumers, Energy, Investment, Pakistan, Policy aid, foreign aid, IMF, US

The Pakistan and Regional Energy forum will be held from October 20-21, at a local hotel. The forum is organised by the Petroleum Institute of Pakistan (PIP) and /IIR Middle East and supported by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources, Government of Pakistan, International Gas Union (IGU) and World Petroleum Council (WPC).

Pakistan’s energy demand over the next 15 years is expected to grow at a rate of between 4.4 to 6.1 percent per annum based on projected economic growth and is likely to be in the range of 115 to 148 million TOE’s by 2021-22.

With that in mind, the Pakistan and Regional Energy Forum will be one of the most open discussions with international experts on the energy sector, discussing key topics including; Renewable Energy and Emissions’ Reductions, Regional Co-operative and Gas Pipelines, Pricing, Regulation and Finance, and the Future of Power Generation.

International experts likely to attend the forum are Dr Marie Lall, Associate Fellow, Asia Programme, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, UK Jonathan Evans, Vice President Oman, BP Exploration (Epsilon) Ltd, Oman Rune Stroem, Country Director, Asia Development Bank, Pakistan.

Via PR News.

Energy, Investment, Pakistan event

The history and politics of oil is often the topic of books and articles. WSJ reviews a recent book Crude World.

Just as there was the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, there is now the Oil Age, and we are living through its last waning decades. Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, a former Venezuelan oil minister who came up with the idea for a cartel in the 1960s, called oil the “devil’s excrement.” Peter Maass, in “Crude World,” a spare, engaging work of reporting and travel writing, calls oil “black oxygen.” It is a neat phrase because, as Mr. Maass demonstrates, oil is almost as essential to our lives as the air we breathe, yet its effect on the countries that produce it, and on the super-alpha males who run the oil industry, is quite sinister. This is a dark book, though not because Mr. Maass is a pessimist—he isn’t. It’s just that his itinerary (Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Russia, and other benighted locales) lends itself to deep foreboding about the human condition.

Oil corrupts, Mr. Maass says, because it is an “extractive” industry. The computer business and other industries actually design and produce something, but oil is simply taken out of the ground. Thus power lies in the hands of the king, dictator or prime minister who controls the real estate and with whom all sorts of unsavory deals can be struck. Extractive industries “do most of their business in compromise-inducing countries,” Mr. Maass explains. “The problem is not that extractive industries have lower principles than other industries. The problem is that they must have better principles”—something that shareholders do not necessarily encourage. Because the number of oil fields on the planet is finite, and the oil in many of them is difficult to extract, the industry is governed by a zero-sum and aggressive realism of the bleakest sort.

Some case studies are included as well.

Then there is Nigeria, which has earned $400 billion from oil profits in recent decades; yet, as Mr. Maass tells us, “nine out of ten citizens live on less than $2 a day, and one out of five children dies before his fifth birthday.” Senegal, which exports fish and nuts, beats Nigeria in per capita income. According to the World Bank, 1% of the Nigerian population—presidents, generals, executives, middlemen and so on—have grabbed 80% of the country’s oil wealth. This is how an extractive industry operates in a politically fractured land of weak and nonexistent institutions.

Whether Mr. Maass is in the primeval, environmentally ruined Niger Delta region of southern Nigeria, or in a Venezuelan slum where “even the jobless are mugged,” or in a menacing and soulless Moscow high-rise, or among wayward, spoiled-brat Saudi youth, he shows how the trail of oil leads a traveler to either grim poverty or repulsive wealth. Oil, he seems to say, exaggerates the worst human tendencies.

Iraq is also part of the author’s itinerary. Mr. Maass acknowledges that the idea of the Iraq war being waged for oil is largely a conspiracy theory. But he suggests that behind the established motives of the Bush administration—finding weapons of mass destruction, instilling democracy, ridding the world of one of its worst dictators—the war in Iraq, on a deeper geopolitical and historical level, was indeed about oil. And I agree with him; for without oil, the importance of Iraq greatly diminishes. Without oil, there could not have been a WMD program, real or imagined, in the first place. It was oil wealth that gave Saddam Hussein such sway over the Arab masses. It was oil that held out the promise of a prosperous and democratic Iraq in the minds of those who favored regime change.

Environment, Investment, Oil, Policy curde world, politics

According to the agreement, a company called ” Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company” will be incorporated with initial sufficient capital to complete the detailed feasibility study for Thar coal power project in Sindh. The project feasibility will be completed in 18 months.

Sindh government and Engro Power Generation Limited on Tuesday signed an agreement for mining and generating 600-1000 megawatts power from Thar Coal fields on public-private-partnership basis. The agreement was signed by Aijaz Ali Khan, Secretary Mines and Mineral Development on behalf of Sindh Government and Asad Umer, CEO Engro Ltd and Khalid Mansoor, CEO Engro Power Generation.

Under the agreement Sindh Government will make 40 percent and Engro will make 60 percent investment. The project envisages 600 to 1000 MW electricity and 2 percent of the profit would be spent on the welfare of local population.

Via Business Recorder.

Investment, Pakistan, power coal

Abu Dhabi fund International Petroleum Investment Co., or IPIC, will go ahead with plans to build a $5 billion refinery in Pakistan after overcoming differences with its joint-venture partner, Pak-Arab Refinery Co., a person familiar with the matter said.

“The issues are resolved and the project is being reactivated,” the person, who declined to be named, told Zawya Dow Jones.

IPIC, which manages energy investments in excess of $14 billion for the Abu Dhabi government, is now preparing to award the project management contract, or PMC, on the refinery, the person said.

In January, IPIC’s chief executive Khadem Al Qubaisi said plans for the refinery were delayed as the company was “facing some problems and issues in Pakistan.” He didn’t elaborate at the time. The global economic downturn was one factor contributing to the delay, the person said.

IPIC didn’t respond to questions about the project emailed by Zawya Dow Jones Tuesday.

IPIC’s board in 2008 approved building the 250,000-barrel-a-day Khalifa Coastal Refinery, or KRC, project in Baluchistan with Parco to help the country meet rising domestic demand for refined products.

IPIC will hold a 74% stake in the project, with Parco to hold the remainder. Parco is a 60:40 joint venture between Pakistan’s government and Abu Dhabi Petroleum Investment Holdings, which in turn is 75% owned by IPIC.

The award of the PMC contract will depend on a review of bidders’ revised price proposals, which should reflect today’s lower cost environment, the person said.

International consultancy firms including WorleyParsons Ltd. (WOR.AU), Shaw Group (SHAW) and Veco Engineering, submitted bids for the PMC contract last year but the award was put on hold amid the delays.

If revised prices meet IPIC’s expectations, an award may happen as early as October. Otherwise, another option would be to retender the contract to secure better prices, the person added.

IPIC also continues to work on plans to build a refinery in Morocco, the person said.

Consumers, Infrastructure, Investment

The Saudi ambassador said Saudi investors consider Pakistan as a potential investment destination with particular interest in agriculture and petroleum sectors.

Speaking on the occasion, Masud said many sectors of Pakistan’s economy like energy, oil and gas, infrastructure development, minerals, agriculture etc offer plenty of investment opportunities and investors of Saudi Arabia should explore these areas for enhancing their investment and business interests in Pakistan.

He said though Pak-Saudi annual bilateral trade has crossed $4 billion, but still it is much below the potential found in two countries.

He said Saudi investment in natural resources found in Balochistan, NWFP and Sindh etc will create beneficial results for both the countries.

Chief Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry Islamabad Office Mian Akram Farid said enhanced direct interaction between businessmen of the two countries could be the best option for increasing bilateral trade and economic relations and urged that both countries should work for facilitating frequent exchange of business delegations to explore new areas of mutual cooperation.

Via Daily Times

Energy, Infrastructure, Investment