Islamabad: The government has intimated its decision to sell the energy sector’s unutilised and dead assets, according to a news report. Specifically, it plans to get rid of the assets of state-run oil and gas companies due to their declining revenues in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.
For this purpose, it has formed a think tank – under the supervision of Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Petroleum Nadeem Babar – to identify the ongoing pandemic’s impact on the energy and production (E&P) sector and to come up with viable suggestions on how to effectively dispose of the dead assets.
A member of this think tank, Pakistan Refinery Limited (PRL) Managing Director (MD) Zahid Mir stated that low petroleum demand due to the lockdown has caused many refineries to shut down. He added that this resulted in numerous oil and gas fields closing down as well, adding up to huge revenue losses. The MD said that power plants using Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) have also shut down but the LNG is still being imported to fulfil the already agreed-upon contracts.
The think tank is tasked with identifying how the COVID-19 infection has impacted the E&P sector, and what innovative measures can be taken to counter these affects.
