BENGALURU: After imposing 25% tariff on India, US President Donald Trump sought to rub it in, saying he had struck a deal with Pakistan to develop its ‘massive’ oil reserves. “Who knows, maybe they’ll be selling Oil to India some day!” he quipped.
But strategic experts tracking Pakistan were not impressed. “It doesn’t impress anyone for there are no proven offshore or onshore oil reserves in Pakistan,” said Sharat Sabharwal, former Indian Foreign Service officer and former diplomat to Pakistan.
Trump’s reference to the oil deal with Pakistan seems to be part of his effort to ratchet up pressure on India to get his trade deal, he said.
The purported oil deal remains “unclear”, said Swathi Kalyani, geospatial researcher at Bengaluru-based think tank, The Takshashila Institution.
“While there are claims about surveys done regarding offshore oil reserves in India, there is no publicly available data currently to validate the same for Pakistan... If we compare the proven oil reserves, India’s global position is 23rd, much ahead of Pakistan’s 52,” Kalyani said.
Kalyani added that most of Pakistan’s operational oil fields are in its north but a significant number of gas fields are along the Indus, in the Balochistan region. Kalyani said oil mining will have wider consequences for the region and the dependent population. “With American investments coming in, Pakistan may end up facing collateral damage,” she added.
“The well known oil reserve of Pakistan in the Indus basin is the Sari field (World Oil Map) discovered in 1966. It is spread across Sindh majorly, and remains in Balochistan. A 2017 report by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) regarding undiscovered oil reserves in the Lower Indus Basin, too, did not say anything about offshore reserves,” she added.