PD Officials to Face Music Over Misuse of Training Fund
Staff Report:
Islamabad: Petroleum Division Officials are set to face the music as the chairman sub body of Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has ordered to conduct special audit of Training Funds reportedly being misused by Petroleum Ministry officials.
DGPC is custodian of multimillion dollars training fund which is contributed by oil and gas exploration companies and misused by the petroleum ministry officials.
The sub-committee met under the chairmanship of Committee Convener Syed Naveed Qamar at the Parliament House.
The chairman Sub Committee of Public Accounts Committee Syed Naveed Qamar lashed out petroleum division over misuse of training funds.
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He said that officials had been using this funds to visit Room with their wives while ignoring those children living near the oil and gas exploration fields.
The issue was taken up while discussing the audit para relating to utilization of training funds by Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL).
Auditors said that OGDCL had a training fund of 584000 US dollars but it utilized only 5 percent of total funds.
Managing Director OGDCL Ahmad Hayat Lak challenged the claims of auditors and said that the company had disbursed half of the money to DGPC Petroleum division and utilized more than half of the funds on the domestic and external trainings of the officials.
While discussing audit para relating to strategic storages, Lak said that these storages had helped the company to store oil at a time when Attock Refinery had shut down.
He said that even these storages were used to store oil from other fields across the country.
The sub body settled almost all audit paras relating to OGDCL after the secretary petroleum and managing director (OGDCL).
The chairman sub body Naveed Qamar raised question over the benchmark of Unaccounted for Gas (UFG) set by the oil and gas regulatory authority (Ogra).
He criticized Ogra for setting up unrealistic benchmark of UFG.
Naveed Qamar passed these remarks while discussing audit paras relating to SSGC.
The auditors had said that SSGC had been facing 17 percent UFG which resulted in burdening consumers with Rs 90 billion while causing another loss of Rs 129 billion during the last few years.
The managing director SSGC Amin Rajput said that company had achieved milestone in reducing the UFG during the recent years which stood at 10.56 percent in year 2023-24 compared to 13 percent during the corresponding period of last year.
He further said that there were high losses in the areas of the Balochistan province where there were several cases of tempering gas meters. He said that company had reduced losses despite such challenge.
He further said that LNG swap issue had been resolved between SSGCL and SNGPL as the both companies had signed settlement agreement.
The SSGC had paid Rs 20 billion to SNGPL whereas remaining Rs 11 billion would be paid in the installments.
Speaking about gas theft, the SSGC MD said that large-scale theft occurs in remote areas of Balochistan, where 60% of SSGC’s total gas theft takes place.
Chairman sub body raised question who would bear the UFG losses above the benchmark set by the regulator.
He also raised question of violating 158 article which binds the government to utilize the local gas in the gas producing province before giving it to other province.
Secretary Petroleum Momin Agha said that the entire country would have to face the burden of gas losses.
He said that losses were resulting in circular debt issue and added the Prime Minister had called a meeting on Friday to resolve this issue.
Regarding another audit para related to gas prices, which remained pending with the Director General Gas of the Ministry of Petroleum for seven years, the Petroleum Secretary confirmed that the main reason E&P companies have been leaving Pakistan is because such summaries are deliberately delayed or suppressed by ministry officials.
