Pakistan’s LNG system carries a fixed cost that does not sleep. Every single day, $538,535 leaves the system -- whether gas flows or not. Over a decade, that has crossed $1.6 billion. The payments go to terminal operators at Port Qasim, Karachi, for floating regasification units that convert imported LNG into pipeline gas.
Cold truth: This is not a fuel bill. This is a capacity bill.
Colder truth: The ships can sit idle. The cheques do not.
On March 4, Qatar invoked force majeure. LNG cargoes stopped -- Pakistan’s payments did not. At roughly $16 million a month, Pakistan continued to pay for terminals with nothing to regasify.
Imagine: Pakistan cannot feed the 44.7 per cent of its population that survives below the poverty line. Imagine: Pakistan cannot fully fund the defence equipment its armed forces need to protect the country’s borders. Imagine: Pakistan goes to the IMF with a begging bowl every few years, negotiating humiliating conditions just to keep the lights on.
Imagine: Every single day, without fail, Pakistan finds $538,535 to pay for ships that are not moving, vessels that are not working, and gas that is not flowing.
So, who will stop the meter? The present government says the contracts, as signed, carry no force majeure protection for Pakistan. Fact: Tools exist. They are simply not being used.
Ogra, the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority, has the power to review and revise the tariff structure for both terminals. No gas flowing means no service rendered. A regulator worth its name would have opened that proceeding on March 5. Two operators. One port. Guaranteed dollar returns whether or not a single cubic foot of gas moves. Is that a market -- or a cartel dressed in contractual language? The Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) has the mandate to investigate exactly this kind of arrangement.
The question is why it hasn’t. Why has parliament become a spectator in this? The Public Accounts Committee has the authority to call for a fresh forensic audit of the original contract awards -- how they were structured, why force majeure relief was explicitly excluded for Pakistan but not for the operators, and whether the contracts were designed, from the outset, to ensure that all risk flowed in one direction.
Why has the Parliament become a spectator in this? Every day this question goes unanswered costs Pakistan $538,535. Someone decided to start this meter. Someone has the power to stop it. The people deserve to know who -- and why they haven’t.
The writer is an Islamabad-based columnist.
