February 14-2014
Pakistan will send officials to Qatar this month aiming to sign a liquefied natural gas (LNG) deal at a discount to help alleviate its power supply crisis, a Pakistani official told Reuters.
There have been widespread public protests in Pakistan in recent years over frequent power cuts due to a lack of fuel for power stations.
Islamabad had hoped to address the problem with natural gas piped overland from Iran, but that project remains stalled partly by US sanctions against Tehran but mainly because Pakistan cannot raise the capital to build the pipeline.
“Qatar wants to sell at a market price and Pakistan is looking to get a discount,” the official said. Otherwise the LNG would be more expensive than piped gas from Iran. “We expect the deal to be signed this month for an amount of 3.5 million tons per year.”
He said Pakistani energy officials would fly to Doha in late February hoping to convince Doha to sell them about 5 percent of Qatar’s annual LNG output at below international market rates. Before Pakistan could accept the LNG, however, it would need to build a special port to land the LNG and re-gasify it.