RECORDER REPORT

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Petroleum Ali Pervaiz Malik on Thursday said that every sector and division needed to stand on its own feet, as the Petroleum Division could not continue to bear excessive taxation and financial interventions merely to meet budgetary requirements.

Addressing the Energy Conference 2026, the minister said that the Petroleum Division could not be a division on which you continue to load exorbitant taxation and exorbitant financial interventions to meet budgetary impacts because the sector’s sustainability is equally important.

The minister also expressed gratitude to the World Bank for supporting efforts to unbundle and reform the gas sector.

“The government is examining ways to separate the infrastructure business from the energy business, introduce greater competition, improve liquidity in the upstream sector and enhance efficiency and optimization,” he added.

“The World Bank-supported report is expected by the end of August, which will be presented to the prime minister, and once it is presented to the prime minister, they would slowly and gradually move in the right direction,” he said.

The minister said greater competition had already been introduced through the third-party access regime, and the government would continue developing the platform.

The minister said deregulation and greater private-sector participation remained key government objectives for reforming the energy sector.

He said the government would continue to push reforms regardless of the criticism they attracted or the impact on their popularity.

The minister said Pakistan was reviving offshore exploration after two decades under the leadership of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Friendly countries, Mari Petroleum, Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) and Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) were participating in the effort.

He said the government must provide investors with policy consistency and medium-term visibility, particularly when companies were making major investments in high-risk exploration.

“If we expect them to invest over a hundred million dollars for one well, we must provide them consistency of policy and medium-term visibility,” he said.

Ali Pervaiz Malik said investors should also be allowed to retain profits from successful exploration and reinvest those earnings in developing the required infrastructure.

“That is the only thing that will enable us to sustainably make this sector grow,” he added.

The minister said Pakistan’s foremost crisis was its vulnerability to external shocks. He stressed that petroleum must be made an integral part of the country’s medium-term national energy policy.

He called for greater convergence and coordination among the petroleum, power and water divisions.

He said the government also needed to consider the demand outlook and the impact of wider economic activity on the petroleum sector.

Malik said the inter-ministerial platform of the Cabinet Committee on Energy (CCoE), chaired by the prime minister, had been reactivated, and several meetings had already been held.

He said he had personally suggested to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif that the committee should meet every two months, regardless of whether it had a specific agenda, to review developments across the energy value chain.

“This is one committee which needs to convene every two months to have a discussion on understanding what is happening in the energy value chain,” he said.

The minister said that the committee brought together the petroleum, power and finance ministers, allowing them to collectively determine how the energy sector could be taken forward on a sustainable basis.

Touching upon circular debt and other legacy challenges, Malik said the government had maintained its flow at near-zero levels without increasing consumer prices.

He said the refineries had responded positively to the government’s request.

However, Ali Pervaiz Malik said, the government needed to address the larger issue of why local refineries remained in a dilapidated state and had not been upgraded to deep-conversion facilities.

He said the new refinery policy and operational flexibility were intended to address these longstanding issues.

The minister said the Petroleum Division secretary was finalising agreements with refineries and a signing ceremony would be held.