By SKM
September 29, 2026
ISLAMABAD: Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDC) has signed a contract with the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH) for the hiring of advanced Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) Element Profiling and Radioactive Element Profiling services for lithium extraction from Wahid Bakhsh well, Khairpur, Sindh.
The signing ceremony was held at OGDC Headquarters in Islamabad and was attended by MD/CEO OGDC Ahmed Hayat Lak, senior management of OGDC, and representatives of PAEC and PINSTECH.
Under the agreement, PINSTECH will carry out ICP-based elemental profiling of produced water and brine from candidate OGDC wells, quantifying lithium, rare earth elements, precious metals and radioactive elements.
More than 2,000 samples will be collected from candidate wells for the presence of lithium and other rare and critical earth metals. The exercise will build a comprehensive geochemical database of OGDC’s produced water, rank wells by lithium and rare earth content, and map areas of high to low concentration, providing the technical basis for evaluating the feasibility of Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE).
The expanded profiling effort is aimed at turning produced water, long treated as a waste stream from oil and gas operations, into a potential source of critical minerals.
The agreement comes as OGDC expands its diversification beyond conventional hydrocarbons into minerals and new energy resources, including lithium and rare earths recovered from produced water and geothermal brines. OGDC’s pilot at the Wahid Bukhsh-01 well has already identified geothermal brine containing 291 mg/L of lithium, a concentration comparable to leading geothermal-lithium brines internationally. Ends
