Türkiye and Pakistan united to exploit the new gas and oil fields in the Indian Ocean
Newly discovered offshore oil and gas fields in Pakistan's territorial waters could be brought to the surface by Pakistan and Türkiye.
This week, at the Pakistan Minerals Investment Forum 2025 in Islamabad, the two countries signed an agreement to jointly bid for 40 offshore blocks. In February, the Pakistani government announced a tender for exploration licenses for the blocks, located in the Makran and Indus basins.
According to News.AZ , Pakistani companies Mari Energies Limited, Oil and Gas Development Company Limited and Pakistan Petroleum Limited will jointly participate in the offshore tender with the Turkish state enterprise Türkiye Petrolleri Anonim Ortakl (TPAO) .
Pakistan's 40 offshore blocks
Modern Diplomacy said the discovery, made during a three-year survey, gathered data suggesting it is the fourth largest oil and gas field in the world. Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Canada are the three countries with the largest proven oil reserves.
The field would be so large that it could change the economic direction of Pakistan, where one in four people lives in poverty.
If Pakistan's offshore reserves are so large, the obvious question is: why haven't the oil majors pestered the Pakistani government to drill for them?
In a January 2024 article, Oilprice said Shell announced the sale of its stake in Pakistan to Saudi Aramco in June 2023 and that an auction for 18 oil and gas blocks had, at best, a lukewarm response from international bidders. According to The Nation, no international companies bid for 15 blocks.
In July [2024], the country's oil minister, Musadik Malik, told a parliamentary committee that no international companies were interested in offshore oil and gas exploration in Pakistan, and that those in the country mostly had the exit door in sight.
Malik told the commission that the cost of security is a major disruptive factor, because "in areas where companies are looking for oil and gas, they have to spend a significant amount to maintain the safety of their employees and their assets." And security is provided by Pakistan, which has not been up to the task.
In March [2024], five Chinese engineers were killed in a suicide attack in northeast Pakistan, when a vehicle packed with explosives rammed into a bus carrying personnel from Islamabad to the giant Dasu Dam project in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The project is part of the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). This incident triggered a series of temporary shutdowns in other projects as well.
Earlier that month, insurgents attacked Chinese facilities in southwest Pakistan, storming the Chinese-run Gwadar Port Authority complex. The attacks were perpetrated by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), separatists fighting for an independent Balochistan, as reported by the Lowy Institute .
According to Pakistan's Energy Minister Mohammad Ali, Pakistan has 235 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas reserves and an investment of $25-30 billion would be enough to extract 10% of these reserves over the next decade, to reverse the current declining gas production and replace energy imports.
Pakistan
The discovery of oil and gas could produce further benefits. Modern Diplomacy notes that Pakistan's marine areas are rich in natural resources, including minerals such as cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements. The idea is to exploit its “blue water economy”.
"The potential goes beyond electricity and includes activities such as fishing, marine biotechnology and even ecotourism. A coordinated effort to expand these industries could give Pakistan a variety of revenue streams and generate employment, thereby strengthening its economy," the publication said.
While Pakistan may not have the technological capabilities for deep-sea mining, there is growing global interest in this sector, with some companies exploring the potential for mining polymetallic nodules that contain precious metals. Turkey has a deeper technological and industrial base than Pakistan, as well as a significant energy hunger. Furthermore, the two countries are Sunni Muslims, and this lays the foundations for an axis that starts from Türkiye, passes through the Caucasus, arrives in Pakistan and then up to Indonesia.
Thanks to our Telegram channel you can stay updated on the publication of new Economic Scenarios articles.
The article Turkey and Pakistan united to exploit the new gas and oil fields in the Indian Ocean comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/turchia-e-pakistan-uniti-per-sfruttare-i-nuovi-giacimenti-di-gas-e-petrolio-nelloceano-indiano/ on Mon, 14 Apr 2025 15:11:36 +0000.