November 28, 2001	Wednesday	Ramazan 12, 1422

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ISLAMABAD, Nov 27: The Orient Petroleum Inc has off loaded as many as 100 Pakistani employees along with top foreign management after its two exploration wells went dry in the Sindh province.

As a result, OPI’s staff strength in Pakistan has come down from around 400 to 300 with indications that another 30 to 40 officials would face retrenchment in the coming days, sources in OPI and petroleum ministry confirmed.

The OPI, an exploration and development company incorporated in the United States, is the operator of Sanghar concession block besides some other fields like Dhurnal, Ratana and Bangali. State run Oil and Gas Development Company, Pakistan Oilfields and Government Holdings are its joint venture partners in Sanghar.

The joint venture was awarded concession agreement of Sanghar block in 1999 with a commitment to drill at least 19 exploration wells. Of these, around 10 wells were later assigned to Petronas Carigali of Malaysia.

As per work programme under the petroleum exploration agreement, the joint venture is bound to invest around $43 million during initial three-year term of the contract. The retrenchment involved staff in almost all departments including operation and maintenance, engineering besides office management.

President of OPI John Kennedy and vice-president operations Ian Davis besides Jerry Waston who spearheaded the retrenchment plan have also separated from the company.

An OPI official said it was a part of company’s restructuring policy to maintain exploration expenditure at a reasonable level and had full support of the joint venture partners.

The official confirmed that its two initial wells have gone dry but the remaining investment plan was intact strictly in accordance with the concession agreement.

He said that the management has inducted Shahid Sattar, a local professional, as president of the company to complete the remaining exploration programme.

An official of the directorate general of petroleum concessions when referred to this over 25 per cent reduction in Pakistani staff said the government could not interfere in the internal administrative affairs of the operators. However, he said that only the joint venture partners could raise the issue if they opposed the move in the first place.

To a question, the official refused to comment whether the company could give up further exploration activities and said the government was not aware of any such move. Terming it a mere speculation, the official said that the company was bound to pay heavy penalties in case of non-completion of work programme but referred to an old incident in which British Gas had to pay $7 million penalty on the same ground.

He said that the company had the option to revise its work programme in the light of latest results but not without the approval of the federal government and joint venture partners. Pakistan has a success ratio of 1:3 wells as against 1:10 international rate.