Senate body urges Govt not to undertake privatization of energy resources

ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Petroleum and Natural Resources has urged the Government to formulate a comprehensive privatization policy keeping in view the long term interests of the country and not to put any strategic asset particularly with regard to energy for sale in haste.

The golden assets of the country like the Steel Mills and Qadir Pur field should not be privatized, said the committee, which met at Parliament house on Friday under the chairmanship of Senator Syed Dilawar Abbasi.

Necessary changes may be made in their management to run them adding professional lines instead of divesting them, said the committee members. The committee called for visionary approach and total review of the privatization process undertaken since 1991. It reviewed the status of privatization of the OGDCL, PPL, PSO, PMDC, etc.

For the privatization of PSO, the committee recommended that the increase in natural gas prices approved by OGRA recently should not be passed on to the consumers since the crude oil prices and HOSBF have come down drastically all over the world and in next month price fixation, it will remain the right of the consumer to get the benefit for the last months to be spread over and adjusted with the half year price adjustments.

It regretted cauterization approach on part of certain companies, which is the main impediment in transferring the benefit of oil price decrease to consumers. It was informed that depreciation in the value of rupee and consequent increase in dollar is one of the reason of the gas price increased.

Appreciating the Government’s decision to put on hold the planned privatization Qadir Pur Gas field, the committee said a fuller and systematic evaluation of the field is needed before we moved ahead with the privatization plan. Due diligence must be done in this regard. It feels that it is not the right time for such a move since oil prices are going down and the whole world is looking for energy security. Senator Haroon Khan said that countries like India and China are very buying energy resources as far as Kazakhstan, whereas we are just doing the opposite.

He called for aggressive exploration and futuristic vision to obtain energy security. The members of the committee observed that energy resources of the country should not be privatized. We should rather try to broaden and develop our energy resources further. Senator Rukshana Zuberi held the view that the privatization of KESC was undertaken in haste and was a complete disaster.

The people of Karachi are paying the price, said the Senator. The committee urged the ministry of petroleum and the privatization commission to seek guidance from the Parliament and the process must be very transparent to restore the confidence of people.

With regard to petroleum prices, it was observed that with regard to petroleum prices, sales tax is being charged from consumers on three major factors that PDL, Deem Duty and dealers margin without any justification.

The meeting was attended by Senator Haroon Khan, Mir Mohabbat Khan Marri, Rukshana Zuberi and Muhammad Talah Mehmood, besides senior officials of the ministry of petroleum, Cabinet division and OGDCL and OGRA.