http://www.dawn.com/2006/01/25/ebr6.htm


Canadian company to set up $2bn plant

KARACHI, Jan 24: A Canadian oil and gas company on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Sindh government for establishing a petrochemical plant in the province to produce bye-products of coal including diesel, jet fuel, chemicals and plastics.

Chief of Kethy Oil and Gas Company, Robert Miller, signed the MoU on behalf of his company, while director general Sindh Coal Authority, Syed Abbas Ali Shah signed on behalf of the Sindh government at Chief Minister’s House.

Sindh Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim and Minister for Mineral Development Irfranullah Khan Marwat witnessed the signing ceremony.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Arbab Rahim said that Sindh was endowed with huge reserves of coal and all these deposits would be explored and utilized.

He said that the basic infrastructure had already been provided in Thar area connecting the coal fields to Karachi by road and rail links. The chief minister said that the Canadian company will bring in the latest technology to exploit methane gas lying below the coal reserves.

This gas will be converted into diesel, jet fuel and plastics as bye-products of coal and sold locally to meet the rising demands for these products.

He said that the Sindh government will provide all possible support and help to the Canadian company to execute the project.

To a question, he said that the new offshore and onshore coal fields had also been discovered in the province. With regard to the problem faced by the Chinese company engaged in setting up a power plant in Thar, he said that the president and the prime minister had taken up the tariff issue with WAPDA. As soon as the tariff is approved, the company will take further steps, he added.

Earlier, speaking at the signing ceremony, Robert Miller said that his company will invest about $2 billion on the exploration, development and production of coal’s bye-products.

He said that his company will use latest petrochemical, drilling and exploration technology in Pakistan, which will be new to this part of the world.

“We will also set up a Geology exploration excellence centre in Sindh. In the first phase, we intend to invest more than $250 million and we plan to be in the field by February this year and drill about 1,000 wells,” he said.

Miller said that this project will provide 10,000 jobs directly, while 40,000 people would be linked to the project indirectly. He said that the Pakistani engineers possessed the required qualifications needed for the project.—APP

finally pakistan can make coal to oil/diesel

hopefully we will start to make huge amounts of domestic oil/diesel needs

Well we have something like more than 220 billion tons of coal in thar, Sindh. So that could be alot of oil and gas enough to bring down prices in Pakistan.

184.5 Billion Tons (6th Largest in the World)

If this news becomes a reality, the impact will be like HUBCO, -- i.e. multi-pronged e.g stocks will pick up, unemployment will decrease, other companies will be attracted too, in the long run we could even see some more investment from the same company or it's affiliates.

On the other hand, if the company backs off then it would be another of those huge forgone oppurtunities such as 950 Mn $ investment by FMN in the engineering sector (2 years ago) or the 1 Bn $ investment that was to come to make a CFRF dam in the north by an American company.

Guys...whatever happened to that website urban pakistan ??

Great News

Correction:

Thats 50,000 jobs

By the way, will some of these products also come to Canada?