With the change of premiership, Petroleum Ministry makes another attempt to bring the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority under its administrative control as the Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf will be chairing a meeting in this regard on Thursday.
An official source said that with the new Prime Minister taking charge, the Petroleum Ministry has again moved a summary to bring OGRA under its administrative control which was rejected by the former Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gillani earlier this year. The move is expected to be strongly opposed by the Ministry of Law and Cabinet Division, under which administrative control of all regulatory agencies falls. The objective of placing all the regulatory agencies under the Cabinet Division is to curtail interference of their line ministries to empower them to operate independently.
The National Assembly Standing Committee on Petroleum and Natural Resources had unanimously resolved that OGRA and Department of Explosives, which fall under the administrative control of Ministry of Industries, should be given under the control of the Petroleum Ministry to end anomalies in implementing policies to overcome energy shortages. The source said the move was aimed at to curtail the interference of OGRA in the implementation of policies formulated by the Petroleum Ministry. OGRA’s decision to demand guarantee worth $ 1 million for LNG import from three private sector parties had annoyed the ministry as there was no such condition in the original policy. The parties were granted permission to import LNG and market it themselves to the private sector.
OGRA has opposed the LPG Air mix project of the Petroleum Ministry on the grounds that it would lead to massively increasing the natural gas tariff for the consumers. It is also opposed to granting permission to import LNG to two private companies for which the sovereign guarantee would be provided by the government.
Expressing of concerns by OGRA was termed as interference in the policy domain which is the prerogative of the Petroleum Ministry. The ministry is of the opinion that the administrative control of Cabinet Division over OGRA often leads to inadequate decision, as it could not possibly evaluate the regulatory and decision making business of the regulatory agency. This administrative structure of OGRA has seriously impaired the efficiency, capacity and accountability of the organization.
