Pakistan has agreed to import natural gas from Qatar following delays on a proposal to build a pipeline to transport the fuel from Iran, officials say.
Pakistani and Qatari officials met yesterday in Doha and reached a preliminary agreement to ship 1.5 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) per year to Pakistan, a government energy adviser told Bloomberg. “There is a shortage,” said Asim Hussain, a petroleum and natural resources adviser to the Pakistani government. “We are a country that is not self-sufficient in gas.”
Pakistan had originally sought 3.2 million tonnes, but Qatar could not provide that amount, Mr Hussain said. Pakistan regularly suffers power cuts because it has inadequate supplies of gas to fuel power stations.
The country faces a gas shortage of about 192 million cubic feet per day (cfd), according to estimates released earlier this year by the ministry of petroleum resources. That amount will grow to 507 million cfd next year and reach 3 billion cfd by 2015.
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