A bid by Pakistan's biggest listed firm, Oil and Gas Development Co Ltd (OGDCL), for BP's local assets has been delayed because of a legal issue, company officials said. Two OGDCL officials said on Tuesday the company had asked BP to give it more time to make the submission, hoping the legal issue would be resolved.
OGDCL spokesman Basharat Mirza said on Monday it would bid jointly with Pakistan Petroleum Ltd (PPL), Pakistan's second-largest listed firm by market value, for the assets. He said the bid would be submitted later in the day. The two companies had a December 6 deadline to submit the bid, officials had said earlier.
In a petition filed last month, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, former chief of Jamaat-e-Islami, is seeking reasons why the two state-owned companies - OGDCL and PPL - are trying to buy the BP assets that were sold by the government to BP in 2002 at what he called a "throwaway" price.
The OGDCL official said the company asked for an extension of the bid after a Supreme Court hearing in the case late on Monday. The court took up the case again on Tuesday and fixed the next hearing for Wednesday. "Our management decided to delay the bid and asked for an extension, pending the outcome of the court decision," said one official, who asked not to be named. BP announced its plans to sell its upstream assets in Pakistan in July, as part of a $10 billion global asset sale aimed at raising cash to pay for its Gulf of Mexico oil spill. OGDCL already has some stakes in BP's Pakistan assets.
BP's upstream assets and related operations, which it plans to divest, include nine producing and exploration onshore blocks and four offshore exploration blocks in the Arabian Sea, according to official sources. They contribute about 14 percent of Pakistan's total oil production and 6 percent of its domestic gas production.
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