The Pakistan Economy Watch (PEW) on Friday rejected government’s plan to import 15 thousand tonnes of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) monthly during winter.
The import of 75 thousand tonnes of LPG which will continue for from November to March to reduce shortage of natural gas is aimed to personal welfare while masses will have to pay the bill, it said.
The top management of Sui Southern Gas Company Limited and Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited has been directed to buy 500 tonnes of LPG each from Saudi Aramco to be added in gas system after mixing air in it.
Similarly, the SSGC and SNGPL, which will buy 250 tonnes of LPG each, has been directed to make a deal through a broker, highly placed sources in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources told Abdullah Tariq, SVP, PEW.
The present Aramco CP (Contract Price) for LPG is $ 946 per tonne while bringing it to Pakistan will cost another $ 150 per tonne excluding taxes and other expenditures. The move will cost masses Rs 50 million per day for five months or 7 billion and 80 crores in total.
Sources further said that the broker with whom deal is almost final will have to pay a commercial bribe of 25000 dollar (Rs 23 lakh) per day which will be deposited in an offshore account of a politician.
If the supply continued for five months, the total kickbacks paid by the Saudi broker will be around Rs 3.5 billion.
Abdullah Tariq said that government and private companies in are extracting 1100 tonnes of LPG from all the oil and gas wells in Pakistan which is shrinking natural gas. On the other hand government plans import of LPG which will jack up cost of gas for masses. Theft of gas has reached to 12 per cent of total production or around 504 tonnes. This is the same amount of gas government wants to import but it would not stop leakage. It may be mentioned that price of local gas is $6 per British Thermal Unit (BTU) while cost of imported LPG stands at $ 24 per BTU.
Presently country’s total production of
