PESHAWAR: The Council of Common Interest (CCI) is set to take up Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government’s demand for the award of petroleum exploration rights in the province to the federal and provincial holding companies without holding bidding.

The 34th meeting of the CCI is scheduled to take place in Islamabad on Friday with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi in the chair and all provincial chief ministers in attendance.

The meeting’s itinerary has the KP government’s one agenda i.e. petroleum exploration rights without bidding and two non-agenda items, including access to real-time data of oil, gas and electricity production in the province.

The CCI will also consider the implementation of its decision regarding the payment of net hydel profit (NHP) arrears to the provincial government.

Forum also set to take up province’s request for access to real-time data of oil, gas, power production

The KP government has proposed to allow the provincial holding companies to enhance their investment base and encourage the much needed investment in the exploration activities. “KP proposes one-time relaxation for the award of one new exploration block to each of the four provincial holding companies in their respective provinces and one block to the GHPL in any part of the country without competitive bidding,” the meeting’s agenda notes.

The exploration rights are granted under the Petroleum Rights and Production Policy, 2012, which states the overall process should be carried out through competitive bidding, which also applies to public sector companies.

The KP government, which has incorporated 100 percent owned provincial holding company named KPOGCL, which has also been followed by other province and company has taken up this matter with the ministry of petroleum and natural resources to grant new exploration blocks located in the province without following competitive bidding.

However, the federal government has objected to it, saying the policy does not allow the grant of petroleum exploration rights without bidding.

The forum will also discuss the provincial government’s request to implement the decision of the Inter-Provincial Coordination Committee taken on Sept 2017 for the finalisation of the Kazi Committee Methodology in letter and spirit in regard to the NHP payment.

The federal government has to pay an outstanding payment of Rs16.82 billion for the 2016-17 to the province, while during for the current year until October, the centre owes the province to the tune of Rs11 billion.

The CCI will also take up the KP’s demand to access to the real-time data of electricity production in the country, duration of outages of KP feeders and usage by Discos as non-agenda item.

The KP government is of the view that it has utilisation share of 13.5 percent in daily national production of electricity. However, it is not getting its share from the centre besides lacking mechanism to monitor the daily production in the country.

The province has been demanding of the centre to immediately install requisite software at the provincial energy and power department to enable it to monitor electricity production, power allocation to each Disco and duration of outages on each feeder in the province in real-time.

KP also says such an access will also help it in the calculation of accrued NHP, which it gets on the basis of units produced at hydropower stations in the province.

The provincial government says it should have the right to allocate the electricity from the less recovery feeders to high recovery feeders so that the available power from the National Power Control Centre is fully utilised.

The forum will also take up a similar request from the KP government regarding access to the real-time data of oil and gas wellheads in the province and consumption of these utilities locally.

KP has long been calling for immediate installation of software by the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited at the energy department for ascertaining the amount of processed gas dispatches and consumed in the province.

Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2017