Energy giant pumping $200m into its Pakistani projects

Capital expenditure made for oil and gas exploration.

KARACHI:

United Energy Group (UEG) Limited, an oil and gas company listed on Hong Kong stock exchange has raised its capital expenditure investment for its Pakistan assets to $200 million for exploitation and exploration works.

The additional investment has boosted the project’s daily production capability from approximately 20,000 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) per day when UEG initiated the project last September to about 25,000 BOE per day as at the end of first quarter of this year.

In December 2010, British Petroleum (BP) agreed to sell its assets in Pakistan to the Hong Kong-based conglomerate for $775 million. After completion of the acquisition deal, the company took command of nine production and exploration blocks in Sindh and four off-shore exploration blocks in the Arabian Sea.

The BP deal last year represented a significant investment made by a Chinese private enterprise in Pakistan’s energy sector. UEG Limited Chairman & Executive Director Zhang Hong Wei expressed his gratitude to governments of both countries for strong support in facilitating the arrangement. “The acquisition has become a model to our peers for investing in Pakistan. United Energy strives to become one of the leading energy reserves and supply enterprise of the country in next three to five years”, he declared.

“Success of our Pakistani project is an example of Chinese private enterprises investing in overseas markets. Though they may face various operational, development challenges, government and related departments will pay closer attention to needs of these companies. Governments of China and Pakistan have great expectations for progress of our enterprise’s energy project. We will continue investing in existing projects and actively identify new development opportunities in other conventional energy generation,” Hong Wei concluded.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 17^th, 2012.