ISLAMABAD, Aug 28: Gwadar should be declared as a free oil port and made to serve the oil trans-shipment requirements of different countries, taking full advantage of its strategic location.

This was suggested during a roundtable discussion on “Global Security and Regional Peace through Alternative Petroleum Storage and Loading Terminals Outside the Strait of Hormuz” held here on Monday.

The discussion was jointly organised by International Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IIPCR) and Pakistan Engineering Council.

IIPCR Executive Director Dr Gulfaraz Ahmed, in his presentation, said around 85 million barrels of oil was presently consumed in the world everyday. The consumption of oil is expected to grow by about two per cent every year well into the middle of this century. Nearly 70 per cent of the worldwide oil supply, around 60 million barrels per day, is imported which represents the scale of the global oil trade.

The widespread availability of oil is shrinking due to declining reserves and a number of oil exporting countries will become net importers of oil in the coming years.

But over half of the global reserves of oil (56.5 per cent) are concentrated primarily in a few countries of the Persian Gulf (Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar), which are likely to outlast many other sources of world oil supply.

It is therefore generally visualised that the global reliance on oil reserves of the Persian Gulf countries will continue to increase in the foreseeable future.

The Persian Gulf countries are expected to export around 22 million barrels of oil daily in 2006. Nearly 90 per cent of the exports, 20 million barrels daily, would be transported through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, which constitutes a big choke point for the global oil trade.

Dr Gulfaraz Ahmed said the proposed outlet at the Gwadar deep sea port could take a part of 10 million barrels daily increase in the eastbound oil from the Persian Gulf countries by 2020. The Gwadar port can handle very large crude containers of up to 0.5 million tons dead weight which form a crucial part of the international oil movement.

For every one million barrels daily outlet capacity at Gwadar, Pakistan could possibly net over a third of a billion dollars a year in revenues besides other indirect economic benefits including employment opportunities. This would generate substantial resources to boost Pakistan’s efforts to develop the vast and backward province of Balochistan.

Lt-Gen (retired) Talat Masood, taking part in the discussion, rejected the idea of involving India in the project in a big way opposed the idea of involving China in development of Gwadar port in a “big way”.

“We should not commit the blunder of surrendering our sovereignty to a single country. The port should have a neutral character,” he remarked.

He stressed the need for harmonising domestic, economic and foreign policies. He referred to what he called great decay in overall efficiency in the country and said he did not foresee Gwadar as an island of efficiency.

Former Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar while responding to these remarks dispelled the impression that the involvement of China posed threat to security of Pakistan.

He rejected as baseless the assumptions that China had plans to use Gwadar as its naval base in the future. “China is very sensitive to Pakistan’s security,” he said.

Director Centre for Peace and Human Rights Education Nasreen Iqbal proposed that Gwadar should be named as Gateway to Central Asia.

Adviser to the Prime Minister on Energy Mukhtar Ahmed said there were a multitude of think-tanks in India working on energy sector, making meaningful contribution in policy formulation. He said there was bankruptcy of such institutions in Pakistan.

He said the energy sector was of primary importance for economic stability of Pakistan.