ISLAMABAD: The Prime Minister Office (PMO) and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government have sought clarity from the Petroleum Division over the proposed sale of gas from a field in Kohat without bidding.<\/p>\n
According to sources, the PMO had issued the directive on January 2 after media reports that a minority shareholder of the newly developed Razgir field had finalised the sale of gas to a third party through negotiations instead of open bidding.<\/p>\n
The petroleum division had yet to respond to the PMO.<\/p>\n
KP\u2019s Directorate General of Petroleum Concessions (DGPC) has also reminded the division that it had the power to make a decision on such sales under the Petroleum Policy, 2012.<\/p>\n
Minority shareholder proposes deal for sale to third party; other private partner complains of \u2018being kept in dark\u2019<\/p>\n
The process adopted by the shareholder was against the decision made by the Council of Common Interests (CCI), DGPC Director Mian Nasim Javed said.<\/p>\n
The CCI, which included chief ministers of all four provinces, envisaged a competitive process for the sale of gas to third parties and also stipulated that provincial rights under Article 158 should be protected in such deals.<\/p>\n
Mr Javed said any arrangement violating Article 158 and the CCI\u2019s decision would not be acceptable to the KP government.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, MOL-Pakistan, the operator and 10 per cent shareholder of the gas field, told its partners that it had finalised the sale of gas to a private firm, Universal Gas Distribution Company Ltd (UGDCL), through negotiations.<\/p>\n
Pakistan Oilfields Limited (POL) is the second private shareholder with 25pc stakes.<\/p>\n
The remaining 65pc shares are held by three public companies: Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) (30pc), Oil & Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) (30pc) and Government Holdings (Pvt) Limited (GHPL) (5pc).<\/p>\n
MOL-Pakistan has sought consent from other shareholders for signing of gas sale purchase agreement with UGDCL, according to documents seen by Dawn.<\/p>\n
The deal would enable the Islamabad-based UGDCL to acquire gas for its private customers, mostly CNG stations, to be sold through a pipeline network of Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Le (SNGPL) on payment of wheeling charges.<\/p>\n
However, POL has claimed that the natural resource, overwhelmingly (65pc) owned by the public companies, could not be legally sold to a third party without competitive bidding.<\/p>\n
Dawn reached out to Petroleum Minister Musadik Malik, Secretary Momin Agha, and managing directors of OGDCL, PPL, and GHPL, but none responded to repeated calls or written questions despite reminders.<\/p>\n
MOL-Pakistan\u2019s Reg\u00adional Vice President Ali Murtaza Abbas also did not respond to written requests for comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISLAMABAD: The Prime Minister Office (PMO) and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government have sought clarity from the Petroleum Division over the proposed sale of gas from a field in Kohat without bidding. According to sources, the PMO had issued the directive on January 2 after media reports that a minority shareholder of the newly developed Razgir […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4877,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4878,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4876\/revisions\/4878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}