Islamabad: Caretaker Minister of Energy, Power and Petroleum Muhammad Ali said that country is seeking investments and technology partners from Middle East to develop its energy sector.

“We are looking for investments and technology partners from Middle East, which has very advanced technologies and large players in this sector,” said Ali during an interview with UAE’s state-owned news agency WAM.

“Pakistan has potential. We have players in country but international presence is very limited,” he said, who is attending ADIPEC event in Abu Dhabi. He said, “There is huge opportunity between Middle East players and Pakistani entities”.

Four-day ADIPEC an energy conference taking place in Abu Dhabi from October 2 under theme ‘Decarbonising. Faster. Together.’ is an international exhibition and conference bringing together ideas, ambition, technology and capital needed to accelerate urgent, collective and responsible action to decarbonise quicker and future-proof our energy system.

Ali, meanwhile shared Pakistan has strong presence at ongoing ADIPEC with around 10 companies from oil exploration, marketing and related sectors.

“We have seen very good response. All our companies are actively engaged and there’s substantial interest in their offerings. Presence here going very well,” he stated.

Caretaker Minister admitted that on exploration front, Pakistan has not been able to achieve much success. “This was due to two major reasons, one there have been some payment issues within supply chain and secondly, we have not marketed ourselves way we should have,” he said.

“We are also focusing on power sector. We are looking at transmission investments, promoting renewables and we are also looking at removing the circular debt within power sector so that payment issues are sorted,” he said. Caretaker Minister shared that government would announce bids for offshore exploration in December.

“On decarbonisation front, Ministry of Climate Change is working on establishing carbon fund, while Ministry of Energy is working on development of comprehensive carbon policy,” he told WAM.

Published in The Daily National Courier, October, 05 2023

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