Islamabad December 17 2022: The State Minister for Petroleum Musadik Malik has informed that Russian Energy Minister is visiting Pakistan in the second week of January 2023 to hold further negotiations with Pakistan and enter into an agreement to import crude oil from Russia.
Musadik observed that our government is expecting Russia will export crude oil to Pakistan on a discount as compared to rest of the world, as it had expressed its persuasion during my visit to Russia and things would be settled when Russian Energy Minister will visit to Pakistan.
Four out of five our refineries can utilize two variants of Russian crude oil Siberian Light and Euro, while we can also use them by blending both of them according to the Petroleum minister. Pakistan Refinery can utilize 50 percent of this oil, PARCO can run almost 30 percent on these two variants while Cnergyico could use all variants of oil that can be imported from Russia.
Responding to a question, he said that Imran had talked about the pipeline not about the petroleum oil products during his visit to Russia.
To a question regarding the contradiction of statements between the ministers on Russian oil trade issue, he clarified and said that foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto probably was not aware about the technicalities and wouldn’t have proper information in this regard.
He said that the country is going to import 20 thousand ton of additional Gas cargo from Azerbaijan in the month of January and February 2023 to meet the demand of the masses who suffer from acute Gas shortage. He expressed these views while talking to a private TV channel on Friday.
The state Minister apprised that we are working on TAPI pipeline to import 1300 billion MF Gas yearly from Azerbaijan to Meet the Gas crises in the country and said that access of Furnace oil import is being stopped to maintain the balance.
He informed that PM with his cabinet is working to manage the circular debt issue in order to get out the masses from its burden and said that our Gas reservoirs are decreasing every year that causes additional pressure to import maximum Gas to meet the demand.