Pakistan, India kick off oil talks
30 May, 2012
ISLAMABAD: India and Pakistan opened talks on Tuesday on Islamabad importing oil from its eastern neighbour in a bid to ease a crippling energy crisis, an official said. During the first day of technical-level talks between the two countries in Islamabad, the Pakistani team expressed the desire to import all petroleum products, including high-speed diesel, furnace oil, petrol and jet fuel from India to meet domestic requirements. "India has surplus petroleum products and wants to export it to Pakistan. If we can save some money by buying it from India, we will buy it from them," a senior official at the Petroleum and Natural Resources Ministry told AFP. "We today discussed how to import products from India. We would like to get diesel in Karachi and furnace oil through the Wagah border. We are very interested in getting furnace oil in Punjab for the power plants," he said. Well-placed sources in the ministry informed this scribe that India has additional refinery capacity of 65 million tonnes per annum and this massive surplus could help Pakistan meet its energy shortage. Further discussions between the two countries on transportation and rates for trade of petroleum products would be held in the first month of the upcoming fiscal year (FY) 2012-13. End.
|
