Category: News & Announcement

ISLAMABAD: The federal cabinet on Thursday decided to keep gas and electricity prices unchanged for the next four months [till the announcement of next fiscal budget] and tasked the ministries concerned with reducing taxes on utility bills to provide some relief to the inflation-hit people. The prime minister, while presiding over a meeting of the cabinet, directed the Utility Stores Corporation (USC) managing director to get edible oil and ghee from the factories set up in the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Azad Jammu and Kashmir as these factories…

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ISLAMABAD: The Petroleum Division has forwarded around 17 onshore oil and gas exploration blocks to the quarters concerned in order to get security clearance and subsequently to initiate the activities to discover hydrocarbon reserves in all four provinces of the country. Currently, there are 38 active exploration licences awarded to both local and foreign national oil companies which are undertaking exploration studies and projects in their allocated areas, according to an official data available with APP. The exploration and production (E&P) companies operating in Pakistan have so far drilled 18 offshore…

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Commodity trading major Vitol said it expected oil prices to recover later this year once the effect of the coronavirus epidemic wanes, Bloomberg reported, citing the company’s chief executive.Video Player is loading. Before that, however, the oil market will suffer a 200-million-barrel negative impact on demand during the first quarter, Russell Hardy said, with loss of demand in China at 4 million bpd at the moment, on the back of travel bans and lower economic activity. While this is undoubtedly negative for prices, Vitol’s CEO also said there is a positive…

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Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has declared emergency for the country’s oil industry, calling for measures to ensure Venezuela’s energy security, Sputnik reports, quoting a tweet by the presidential administration. “I declare an emergency situation in the oil industry by constitutional and presidential decree in order to take urgent and necessary measures to ensure the country’s energy security and protect the industry from imperialist aggression,” Maduro said. “Clause 2 creates a plenipotentiary presidential commission for the protection, restructuring and reorganization of the national oil industry”. Reuters quoted Maduro as saying, “The sanctions, the blockade – I…

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Pakistan’s hope that the growth of LNG imports would relieve energy-induced constraints on economic growth has been dashed by project delays. Instead, it has turned to the IMF for economic help and coal to relieve energy shortages When Pakistan began importing LNG in March 2015, marking its first imports of natural gas in any form, some hoped that the country would become a 30mn t/yr market as early as 2020. The optimists—notably former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi—thought imports would help the nation escape energy shortages so severe and prolonged…

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