ISLAMABAD: Chairman Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) Masroor Khan on Wednesday said the petroleum prices internationally were continuously increasing and result may impact on hike in petrol price domestically from March 1.

The National Assembly (NA) Standing Committee on Petroleum held a meeting.

In response to a question about the shortage of LNG, the Secretary Petroleum said that two of our LNG cargoes were cancelled out of which one cargo was arranged but the tender was expensive.

The committee was briefed by the OGRA chairman that establishment of Pabbi Sub-Area and Customer Service Center (CSC), Jehangira; that the proposal in this regard has been submitted by the SNGPL to the OGRA in review petition against the decision of estimated revenue requirement (PERA) for fiscal year 2021-22; and that the decision is pending, while the Standing Committee approved the minutes of the previous meeting and also approved the previous recommendations of the Committee along-with few changes recommended by the Committee and details thereon will be described in the detailed report of the meeting.

Moreover, the Standing Committee unanimously, approved the scrutiny of budgetary proposal of the ministry relating to the Public Sector Development Program (PSDP).

Two (government bills) were taken up by the Committee in the meeting and decided that the “the Petroleum (Amendment) Bill, 2021” may be passed by the National Assembly, whereon, the Law Ministry has provided few technical legislative drafting related corrections to be incorporated as well. Whereon, the “The Pakistan Petroleum Upstream Regulatory Authority Bill, 2022” (government bill) may be deferred for further deliberation thereupon.

The committee, while taking the briefing from one managing director namely; Imran Munir from (SSGC) Official decided that his reply is not as per the rules and due to such defiance from his duty his matter may be referred to the Privileged Committee, while issues relating with the OGDCL were placed before the Committee. The Committee decided to make Sub-Committee under the convenorship of Shahid Ahmed for making further detailed deliberation thereon Imran Khattak, chaired the meeting.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022