ISLAMABAD, Feb 26: The Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) is under pressure to award a contract for the sale of about 20 tons of liquefied petroleum gas to an influential party without inviting tenders, it is learnt.

An official of the state-run company told Dawn that a meeting of the board of directors of OGDCL would be held within this week to award lifting of about 20 tons of LPG from its Dakhni Field until 2019 at a total cost of $1.3 million (about Rs80 million).

Dakhni Gas Condensate Field is located at a distance of about 135 km in the south-west of Islamabad. The field was discovered in February 1983 and came on regular production in December 1989.

Informed sources said the LPG quota of about 25 tons was allocated to Lub Gas in 1989 but the 15-year lease had come to an end in 2004. Later, the production from the field reduced and the OGDCL had distributed the reduced quota among a number of smaller companies a few years ago.

These sources said an influential party was pursuing the ODGCL management to award the contract without any tender to them before the new government takes over.

Under the LPG policy of 2006, the public sector companies are required to dispose of their LPG production through a transparent and open auction.

The Economic Coordination Committee of the cabinet has amended the LPG policy on Monday, which said the public sector exploration and production companies shall exercise their rights to set up LPG extraction facilities at all those oil and gas fields where LPG can be commercially extracted in accordance with development plan approved by the government.

A clause (3.1.1) in LPG had originally required the companies to outsource their LPG production to private parties through open bidding.

However, when the OGDCL wanted to outsource their LPG production of their nine fields in 2006, some shareholders of the OGDCL went to the court on the grounds that the OGDCL assets could only be disposed of through the privatisation process for which approval of the Council of Common Interest and Cabinet Committee on Privatisation was a must. The court stayed the transaction in November 2006.

Meanwhile, these sources said the OGDCL board has also been asked by the higher authorities to regularise the services of contractual employees, including some highly paid consultants, who had been hired over the last eight years.