Ministry of Petroleum (MoP) has shortlisted 14 candidates for the post of Managing Director (MD) of country’s largest explorer, Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) who will appear for interview today (Thursday) before the committee headed by Minister Petroleum and Natural Resources Dr Asim Hussain.
These candidates have been shortlisted out of 740 applications for the post of MD OGDCL.
Sources told The Express Tribune that Ministry of Petroleum has shortlisted five internal candidates including acting Managing Director (MD) OGDCL Basharat Mirza who seems to be a frontrunner for the post. Petroleum Ministry has shortlisted nine external candidates who have no major experience of oil and gas exploration.
The internal candidates shortlisted for the post of MD OGDCL include acting Executive Director (ED) Production OGDCL Riaz Khan, General Manager (GM) Health Safety Environment and Quality (HSEQ) Zafar Chaudhry, General Manager Exploration Zahid Farani and Executive Director (ED) Business and Strategy Planning Aftab Ahmad.
External candidates include Afzaal Akhtar CEO Hamza Energy, A Wasi Khan CEO Byco, Kalim A Siddiqui former MD PSO, Irfan Khalil Qureshi former MD PSO, Shahid Zahid of Permier Oil, Nadeem Kiyani CEO Murco Group, Shahbaz Khan of MOL Pakistan, Sohail Butt of Kuwait Petroleum and Fadi Hayek of Fortune UAE.
An official of Petroleum Ministry said that one criterion to appoint MD OGDCL was required to have experience as the CEO of an oil and gas exploration company. Mirza has been working as acting MD for the last six months. All the other candidates lack this qualification.
All other internal candidates have no such experience. Riaz Khan has been heading production in OGDCL for the last ten years but has failed to enhance production, which has been declining. GM HSEQ Zafar Chaudhry is close to retirement. ED Strategy and Business Planning is among those executive directors whose appointment has been questioned by the auditors.
Among external candidates, no one has experience working as the as CEO of an oil and gas exploration company. Wasi Khan CEO Byco was also shortlisted for the post of MD PSO but was rejected at the final stage by the prime minister. Majority of external candidates have experience of working either in refining, oil marketing or they are related with small energy companies.
Acting MD OGDCL Basharat Mirza has been able to make Kunnar Pasakhi Deep (KPD) project operational in January. This project had been stalled since 2005. At present, KPD field is producing 100 million cubic feet gas per day and 120 metric ton LPG is expected in a week’s time in first phase. During his six month tenure, OGDC management put an additional gas of 30 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) from Qadirpur Reach Extended Well, 13 mmcfd gas and 5,000 barrels oil per day from Nashpa field. OGDC also drilled one well in Zeb Block that has the potential of 800 billion cubic feet gas per day.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 2nd, 2012.
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the same thing will happen in OGDC aswell like we have seen in different public sector org. the one with high PR will win the race and finally the objective is same and that is DESTRUCTION !!
This government will destroy these big state owned oil companies. Time ahead is even darker.
Who is our oil minister ? sec oil ? dgpc ? non of them actually know how an oil company function. additionally, people appointed in the board of directors of these companies and their chairman are not very technical either.
Very disappointing.