New book claims last government sabotaged Mashal LNG project

Author says ministers wanted to award the contract only to Shell Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD: In his book ‘The Proclaimed LNG Scam’, former petroleum secretary GA Sabri has claimed that the country’s former rulers were responsible for causing a loss of a billion dollars to the exchequer by manipulating the process of awarding the Mashal LNG import project contract to Shell Pakistan.

The book, which was launched here on Wednesday, alleges that the then petroleum minister, Syed Naveed Qamar, and the Sui Southern Gas Company’s project director, Naeem Sharafat, were also involved in the scam.

Sabri, who was the principal dealing officer for the project, recalls how the chairman of Shell Pakistan had approached the president with a renewed interest in supplying LNG to Pakistan on a fast-track basis. The president had subsequently directed that the project be expedited.

Sabri says that 4Gas, a company initially involved in the project, had failed to arrange LNG supplies, after which the project was unbundled from the original model of an integrated LNG import project.



Some officials say that the project was unbundled to award the import contract to Shell Pakistan and ignore the bid from the Vitol/Fauji Foundation, another qualified bidder which should have been next in line for the original LNG-2 project.

The author confirms that Shell’s condition for participation was agreed to be on a disintegrated project, rather than the project as it was originally envisioned.

Later, in its decision on the issue, the Supreme Court had asked the authorities to roll back the Mashal project process to the time when it was unbundled. Sabri said that a final summary was moved to the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) in this regard on January 15, 2011, which was finally considered on March 1.

The ECC, however, buried the project by deciding to reinitiate the entire process of the project “expeditiously and in a transparent manner”, which resulted in the project being shelved forever.

Sabri claims that this was done to serve vested interests, which had been thwarted by the Supreme Court’s action.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 20^th, 2013.

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