Parliamentary Secretary for Industries and Production Pir Haider Ali Shah on Sunday criticised the proposed petroleum policy 2011, saying that it was unjust for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan.
Shah, who is also Awami National Party (ANP) leader, said the draft policy was contemplating to disband zones and bring the whole country under uniform structure of gas prices. "The elimination of zones will be unjust and will discourage exploration activities in difficult high risk areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan," he noted.
Pir Haider in a statement issued here, said the government had posted the policy on the web pages and invited the feedback and to gauge the response of different segments of the society.
He said the current petroleum policy 2009 had divided the country into three licensing zones based on investment and risk. Zone-I was comprised of 80 percent area of Balochistan, entire KP and Potohar terrain of Punjab whereas Zone-II and Zone-III were flagged in Sindh and Punjab.
He said the earlier petroleum policies were formulated to encourage petroleum exploration in unexplored, high risk areas where cost of exploration was high. Due to the absence of basic infrastructure, difficult access and availability of logistics, this zoning was done to attract investment in these areas, he added.
He said the elimination of zones would be unjust and discourage exploration activities in difficult high risk areas of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. "It will be difficult to attract the investments in these areas. This major change will be counter-productive in petroleum exploration activities of the two provinces," he added.-PR
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