ISLAMABAD, Jan 22: Pakistan is facing a gas shortage of 5.1 billion cubic feet per day, with demand having soared to 9 billion cubic feet against a daily production of 3.9 billion cubic feet.

This was stated by Adviser to the Prime Minister on Petroleum and Natural Resources Dr Asim Hussain after a meeting with representatives of exploration and production companies here on Thursday. Talking to reporters, he said the new petroleum exploration policy would be finalised on Friday after consultations with exploration and production companies.

The policy, he said, would offer incentives which would be better than given by other countries in the region to attract investment.

Dr Asim said ‘wellhead’ prices were still lower in Pakistan than in India and China.

He said 45 rigs had been operating in Pakistan while 150 were needed to increase the crude production from 37,000 barrels per day to 77,000.

He said that the country required 370,000 tons of crude oil per day and the demand-supply gap was widening because the law and order situation discouraged exploration activities in the NWFP and Balochistan.

Dr Asim said the circular debt had reached Rs170 billion and efforts were being made to resolve the issue to restore the supply of furnace oil and gas to independent power producers.

He said that even the one billion cubic feet of gas a day Pakistan could get from the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project would be used only for power generation.