New petroleum resources importing sources sought

Ramani KANGARAARACHCHI

Diversification of import sources of petroleum resources outside the region will ensure stability in the petroleum sector in the country reducing the risks. Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum Industries, Dr R.H.S Samaratunga said delivering a speech on current challenges of the Petroleum sector organized by the Centre for Banking Studies in Rajagiriya recently.

He said the petroleum resources in the region are depleted and the conflicts in the region could become intensified.

Therefore, it is important for the petroleum sector to adjust to cope up with new and emerging realities of the supply side.

Dr. Samaratunga said major international petroleum related issues emerged recently with the new US sanctions against Iran which created many implications on all trading partners of Iran including Sri Lanka.

He said refinery at Sapugaskanda can process only a limited range of crude oil similar in properties to those of Iranian crude oil. However, Sri Lanka having understood the current difficulties of this aspect is in the process of negotiating with countries which could provide appropriate crude oil for processing in the country’s refinery. This situation poses new challenges for which the only way out would be to re-examine the necessities of incorporating new technologies to the refinery process to circumvent issues of similar nature in the future.

However, it requires a huge capital outlays from the part of government as the refinery was built with the state-of-the-art technology of 1960 whereas processing other types of crude oil requires modern technology.