The 69th Annual General Meeting of Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) was held on October 26 at Pearl Continental Hotel, Karachi. Members approved financial statements for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2020 together with the auditor’s report. Final cash dividend of 10 percent on ordinary and convertible preference shares was also approved.
Presiding over the meeting, Chairman, Board of Directors Shamsul Islam shared that the Board managed to align the company with its vision and mission and set strategic goals for value creation and addition. He commended PPL management and staff for their commitment to ensure business continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic and thanked the government and shareholders for their support.
MD & CEO PPL Moin Raza Khan shared the company’s progress and achievements during 2019-20. He highlighted that it was a challenging year that demonstrated PPL’s resilience, ensuring uninterrupted energy supplies to the nation despite the pandemic. Even so the company recorded its third highest profit-after-tax of Rs 50 billion in its history.
Khan shared that PPL made two discoveries during the year. A fairly good-sized one, western most, at operated Morgandh X-1 in the difficult terrain of Kalat plateau, which is in the deeper part of Balochistan in the fifth line of hills, the appraisal of which will confirm the reserves size. This discovery has opened a new hydrocarbon play area in the country. The other one was made at Bitro-1 in partner-operated Latif Block.
The production remained around 0.9 Bscfde amid low offtake from Kandhkot and natural decline from mature fields. However, production enhancement activities continued, including drilling of 14 development wells and obtaining early production from Fazal and Dhok Sultan in operated and Unarpur and Bitro in partner-operated areas. Further, efforts are afoot to bring Benari at Shah Bandar Block on production along with commissioning of GPF-IV Phase 2, completion of Zafir Processing Facility at Gambat South and installation of oil and gas production facilities at Dhok Sultan, being among the significant ones.
To enhance exploration outreach and mitigate portfolio risks, PPL signed three farm-out and one farm-in agreements and also led a consortium of four local E&P companies to submit a bid for a block in Abu Dhabi Bid Round 2019.
Updating on PPL’s diversification strategy in the mining sector, Khan shared that commercial production of iron ore commenced from Nokkundi while post-feasibility activities of the Barite-Lead-Zinc project has gained further traction with promising export potential. Acceleration of activities in these areas and further new projects will have significant impact on company’s revenue.
Due to a continuous investment in human resource development, quality, health, safety and environment, particularly communication and information technology and good governance best practices, PPL effectively operated through ‘Work From Home’ for most staff during the pandemic and managed field staff rotations for continuous operations along with online meetings as well as partial office attendance with strict adherence to SOPs.
On the CSR front, the company bagged the top Corporate Philanthropy Award for the 15th consecutive year as the largest corporate giver, and is expected be the largest giver for this year.
Moving ahead, Khan talked about enhancing production from existing fields and discoveries and continuing aggressive exploration efforts, particularly in frontier basins with significant potential, along with pilot projects for exploring tight and shale gas prospects.