Tuesday, October 04, 2016
Kabul (BNA) Presided over by President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, the high economic council’s session was held and modification issue of Afghan-Tajik zone contract was discussed. In the session held Sunday afternoon at presidential palace, acting minister of mines and petroleum briefed related to various dimensions of the contract.
Acting minister of mines and petroleum said that consortium of contracting companies (Dragon Oil of UAE, Turkish Petroleum of Turkey and Ghazanfar Group of Afghanistan) wanted the contract to be modified.
It is worth mentioning that Afghan-Tajik zone is located in the country’s north and north-eastern and divided into 12 blocks and has nearly 360 km common borders with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
The contract for the area was signed in 2013 between MoMP and consortium of the respective companies through free international tender.
In the session, the country’s President said that it was necessary to technically review and economically analyze the country’s oil and gas resources and results of the reviews should be delivered to high economic council’s session, adding that modification of the contract should be completely and clearly discussed.
Criticizing lack of a clear picture of the country’s mining resources, President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani added that all mining resources should be surveyed based on a regular program and a committee was to be formed to evaluate the country’s mining resources’ capabilities.
