Pakistani Hascol, Vitol Form LNG Venture

Pakistani Hascol Petroleum has ventured into the LNG business. It has established a separate company, Vas LNG, to pursue opportunities in the sector, the company said in a Pakistan stock exchange filing March 13.

Vas LNG will be a joint venture with Vitol holding 70% stake and Hascol the remaining 30%.

Pakistan is witnessing rising imports of LNG as demand for gas, especially for power generation, expands. During the last couple of years, Pakistan has worked on putting in place adequate import infrastructure to ease the import process. Pakistan has a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU), called Exquisite, which started operations in March 2015 at Port Qasim, Karachi, chartered out by US shipowner Excelerate to local firm Engro. In the past one year, contracts for three more FSRUs have been signed.

Shardul Sharma