Pakistan’s government is planning to drill around 90 exploration and production (E&P) wells across the next fiscal year according to officials cited by the AFP news agency. The strategy is part of the government’s aim to make the country “self-sufficient in the energy sector”.
The officials stated that more than 900mn cubic feet of gas and 32,000 barrels per day of oil have been added to the “transmission network” over the past four years.
During the same time period, E&P firms had drilled 179 exploratory wells and 194 appraisal wells, generating 101 new discoveries. A total of 68 of the new finds had an estimated 5.4 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves while 33 wells had yet to be properly evaluated.
The vast majority of the finds have been discovered in Sindh province in the south east of the country, where 87 sites have been located, while seven have been found in Punjab and the same number in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The Sui gas field is the largest in Pakistan and is located in Balochistan, generating at least 6% of the country’s output.
