KARACHI, 10 July 2004 — Pakistan is set to sell its premier oil and gas company this month in an initial public offering (IPO) of up to 15 percent of its shares, officials yesterday said.

Pakistan Petroleum Ltd. (PPL) is due to go on sale in 10 days with 102.82 million shares being offered to the general public.

“We are offering PPL’s share to ensure our pledge of more and more involvement of general public and small investors,” Pakistan’s Privatization Minister Hafeez Shaikh said.

The government has a controlling 93.63 percent stake in PPL, the leading oil and gas exploration and production company in Pakistan which was established in 1952. International Finance Corp. has a 6.09 percent stake. PPL produces 25.3 percent of gas in Pakistan from reserves of 8.9 trillion cubic feet of gas in southwestern Pakistan.

The company had a stellar start to provisional stock market trading on Monday this week when the value of its shares rose from 55 rupees ($0.95) to 120 rupees.

“It is a good issue as the company’s performance is very good and its revenues are quite attractive and the investors’ response was excellent,” said Zaheeruddin Khalid, chief analyst at Elixir Securities, which is financial adviser of Privatization Commission for PPL.

Lots of 500 shares each will be offered to general public so as to spread holding of the company to about 200,000 people.

“We have planned to give PPL shares away to as many as 200,000 people and keeping this in view we are offering 500-share packages instead of conventional 1,000 shares for such issues,” Shaikh said.

The commission will offer 10 percent or 68.58 million shares of PPL to general public but the number could be increased under the “green shoe option” or extra offering to another five percent (34.3 million) shares if the IPO is oversubscribed.

“Under the plan we will offer another five percent shares to general public in case of oversubscription but we will restrict to the given plan to maintain credibility,” the minister said. Pakistan has earned 19 billion rupees through selling shares at stock markets during the past one and a half years.

“In past 18 months we have raised 19 billion rupees through selling shares at stock market to general public and with launch of PPL’s IPO the amount will go up to about 25 billion rupees,” Shaikh said.