The Global Ambitions of OGDC
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.
