After 15 years of negotiations and planning, the government again has proven that it is incapable of doing its job.
KARACHI: Only days before the commencement of scheduled import of LNG, desperately needed in Pakistan to soften the energy crisis, the Qatari supplier has raised alarms about operational constraints at Port Qasim and expressed its inability to deliver the full shipload of the commodity. Top government officials have confided that Pakistan State Oil has taken up the issue with the federal government while the Port Qasim Authority has also informed that additional dredging was required to facilitate even a not fully loaded LNG ship and that this was the responsibility of the terminal operator.
After 15 years of negotiations and planning, the government again has proven that it is incapable of doing its job. The jetty in Port Qasim that had been acquired from a private proprietor by the SSGC was not suited to fulfill the task at hand, which was visible from the very beginning to everybody who took the time to look at the facility closely. This problem has been mentioned time and again to the higher-ups concerned and they have been repeatedly warned that something like this could happen. Now that it has happened, there seems to be no practical action by the government in this regard. We can readily expect attempts to shift the responsibility around with no result at all. The jetty is unusable to reach by a ship loaded with LNG and has to be upgraded, which will take time — months, at least if not years — and the contract will come to naught.
Ali Ashraf Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, March 24th, 2015.
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