OGDC amazes National Assembly body

The Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDC) has astounded the National Assembly Standing Committee on Petroleum and Natural Resources by saying that LPG quota to privileged marketing companies, without bidding process, was granted in a transparent manner.
The temporary allocation of LPG quota was made in 2004 and the OGDC report did not address the question whether these allocations were made in line with Pepra rules through competitive bidding. Even OGDC had to face litigation from those LPG marketing companies which were given temporary LPG quota violating rules and regulations after the company decided to award quota through tendering process on signature bonus. As many as 14 cases in courts are yet to be decided.
The subcommittee on NA body on petroleum had observed that OGDC temporarily allocated LPG quota in the year 2004 to 15 companies without bidding process and retaining that arrangement for almost five years was undoubtedly in gross violation of rules and smacks of "underhand dealings and corruption".
Subcommittee had recommended that Ministry of Petroleum should be directed to initiate corruption cases against the then management in relevant courts to nab the corruption mafia and to "nip the evil in the bud". In its written reply submitted to NA body on Petroleum here on Wednesday, OGDC authorities said that "it will be worthwhile to note that in the entire process from early times of deregulation to the maturity of process, OGDC has adopted a very transparent process of LPG upliftment/allocation. Temporary upliftment from Bobi was the decision which was appropriate for that time."
"With the above mentioned process of temporary upliftment and later disposal through concept of signature bonus OGDC has been successful to dispose of all its LPG production in a process which helped it optimise the storage capacity at its disposal and later collection of signature bonus when the market was mature enough to understand and absorb the concept," OGDC report adds.
OGDC said that Bobi was the first field to produce LPG after the deregulation of the sector by the government.OGDC started a very transparent process of review and selection of LPG marketing companies to lift and market the expected trial production of Bobi field.
"Since no criteria were available, thus OGDC, after a thorough review of the parties with the valid LPG marketing licence decided to entertain only those companies that had no allocations from any OGDC field. The company allowed temporary upliftment of one bowser of 18 metric tons on turn basis strictly on advance payment instead of fixed allocation to qualified marketing companies," OGDC says.