[asia-apec 1132] Kirthar Park & Oil Exploration --- Ketibander Project

[winner white]

Kirthar  Park  Under  Oil  Exploration  Threat

by: Ayaz Latif Palijo

Three international oil companies have begun preparations for oil exploration in Pakistan's largest park, Kirthar National Park but the provincial and the federal government have not taken a notice. Should we open wider the doors of our national parks for Premier Oil, Lasmo Oil and Shell Exploration? Should we allow these multinationals to violate the international rules of nature and wildlife conservation in our region?.

As many of us know that Pakistan has six national parks - Kirthar, Chiltan, Lal Suhanra, Ayubia, Chattar, Chitral and Khunjerab. Kirthar national park is 152 kilometers from Karachi where visitors can watch endangered Sindh ibex, urial, and chinkara from special points in the hours of morning. Stony wood and many interesting fossils have been discovered in the Kirthar mountains. Kirthar is the largest wild-life sanctuary in Sindh and Pakistan and is the first one from Pakistan that was listed with the United Nations. It is also the home to many endangered species of animals, but in its usual style, some departments are willing to cause its destruction by allowing oil exploration in the park.

The first move in this disastrous process was the conduction of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) by the Premier Oil company which is interested in doing the oil exploration. It appears that some of the local officials of Sindh Wildlife Department (SWD) are taking a stand against the illegal activity, but a concession was sold to Premier Oil by Pakistan's director general for petroleum concessions, and he has decided to bypass SWD and to let Premier, Lasmo and Shell go ahead anyway. In this regard a team of Premier Oil has entered the Kirthar National Park in December 1997 to conduct an environmental impact assessment despite being refused a permission from the Sindh Wildlife Department The team comprised Waqar Zakaria, Dr Rubina, Abrarul Hassan, Sadat Hussain, Shamim Fakhri, Haleem Siddiqui and others.

On the other hand most recently Lasmo Oil and Shell Exploration have publicly announced the discovery of a new gas field in Pakistan, the well was in the Kirthar concession in the Western Sindh region, and has confirmed substantial reserves of good quality gas. Bhit-2 was drilled to a total depth of 2067m, demonstrating that the entire sandstone section was gas bearing, with 150m of net gas pay encountered. They have also declared that further hydrocarbon indications were present below the sandstone to the total depth of the well. Lasmo believes the well is capable of flowing at initial rates in excess of 60mmscfd. The well has now been suspended, with plans moving ahead for appraisal of this and the greater Kirthar area, including deeper structures. A comprehensive seismic survey will begin this year, followed by a sustained drilling program. According to Lasmo chief operating officer John Hogan, the discovery has confirmed the presence of an excellent hydrocarbon province and has increased the attractiveness of several other prospects within the concession and the adjacent Kirthar West, awarded to the company at the beginning of the year.

If the people of Sindh have an opportunity to say what they feel is appropriate, what is permissible in the way of pollution and nature destruction, or what is permissible in the way of resource extraction then the problems of this type and depletion of resources would be reduced, both inside and outside the borders of wildlife preserves. But in fact at the government level we are quite busy in international and global issues and in the times when we can not spare moments for the downtrodden people of mountainous and deserted areas of Sindh and Balochistan how we are supposed to look into the matters of Ibex, Urial, and Chinkara. That is why we are not addressing provincial and federal government, but we the people of Sindh were expecting from World Wide Fund for Nature Conservation (WWF), OXFAM, International Union of Nature Conservation (IUCN), Political parties and Media that at least they should have performed their part of the duty, should have taken locally operating CBOs, NGOs and political activists into confidence and should have demonstrated resistance in this environmentally sensitive area.

All of us believe in democratic control of the levels of resource use, we realize that the best defense against destructive influences is to track both their activities and their effects on natural resources and we know that oil exploration, mining or other such commercial activities are not permitted in the national parks then why did not we speak? Today we are faced with the challenge of adapting our interaction with our environment to create a sustainable society. It is time to learn to live without consuming the very resource base that sustains us and that will sustain future generations.


CANCELLATION  OF  KETI BANDER PROJECT
by: Ayaz Latif Palijo

Last year water and power  minister  of Pakistan informed the national Assembly that the 1320 MW          (originally 5280 MW)  Ketibander  project in Sindh has been abandoned with the consent of the foreign sponsors, Consolidated  Electric Power Asia. The government provided following reasons  for the cancellation of the thermal power project,

1-No physical and real construction work had started at the site.
2-The electricity generated  would be too expensive. It would cost Rs 4 per   unit at the  generation site and Rs 8-12 at consumers end.
3-CEPA intended  to import coal instead of utilizing deposits in Thar.
4-Surplus electricity is available in the country for the future use.
5-CEPA was asking the WAPDA & PPIB to build a transmission line instead of   doing the same itself.

On  the  very next day CEPA  owned by the Gordon Wu of Hong Kong denied the allegations  made by  the   federal  minister . CEPA termed the statement of federal minister as  baseless and  ineffectual . CEPA made it known through its finance manager  that they had not been consulted on the question of termination, that no decision had been conveyed to them and that CEPA 's efforts to have a meeting with the prime minister proved fruitless.

BACKGROUND

The composite billion dollars Ketibander project has four components;
a) A 5280 MW electric plant .
b) A deep sea port (at a distance of 148 km from Karachi).
C) An industrial zone between Thatta and Jamshoro.
d) Thar coal field development .
e) Job opportunities for 7000 indigenous people of Sindh.

The formal agreement of Ketibander project was signed on August 3, 1995 between the CEPA and govt of Pakistan, and  after  eleven weeks on  October 27, 1995 another agreement regarding the purchase of electricity from  CEPA was signed by government of Pakistan. It was decided that the project will be completed in 2001 and its electric power plant will be composed of eight units. Each unit would produce 660 MW,   and  the first two units will use imported coal (probably from Indonesia)  for  the   production  of  1320 MW electricity while for the remaining six  units indigenous Thar coal will be used. The ground breaking ceremony of the project was performed on January 30, 1996 and the people of Sindh , particularly of Thar and Thatta had high  hopes  that with  this  project the doors of opportunities, development and prosperity  would open to them and rapid industrialization and modernization would take place in rural Sindh. The business and economic community also welcomed it because establishment of third deep sea port would provide significant opportunities to import and export business.

The agreement of co-operation  between Sindh govt. and CEPA was signed on April 25, 1996 and the initial work of geological and soil survey was started by the CEPA  with the help of  Geo Engineering Management Services. CEPA also purchased a 3000 acre piece of land at the cost of 90 million Rs. and deposited five million US dollars (twenty crore rupees)in the joint account of Sindh govt. and CEPA . It was stipulated in the implementation agreement that WAPDA and PPIB (private power infrastructure board) will lay  double circuit  500 KW  transmission  line between Ketibunder and Jamshoro(185 km) before December 31, 1996. But they did not even complete the initial tender work of the transmission line. On May 1, CEPA wrote a letter to federal minister of water and  power and requested for the provision of transmission line but could not get any response, then they sent another letter to finance  minister on  5th  but the response was same. Finally  on  24th govt. announced the termination of the project and a wave of resentment and a deep sense of shock was created in Sindh .

The question that is being asked among the democratic and patriotic circles of Sindh is as to why such a multi dimensional and most beneficial project was cancelled by the govt since investment was entirely private and did not involve any funds of the govt. The politicians ,intellectuals and economists of Sindh have termed this  as a biased decision and an act of discrimination and  victimization against a small province. Immediately  after the  announcement  of  the  termination decision former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto , Ghulam Mustafa Jattoi, chief  of  Awami  Tahreek Rasool Bux Palijo and Hazar Khan Bijarani termed it a step-motherly treatment to Sindhis and a conspiracy  to keep Sindh backward and deprived of investment. They  condemned  this arbitrary and politically motivated decision and warned that it would have serious repercussions for the integrity of the country.

Well informed sources of the media and the technocracy are of the view that WAPDA and pro Kalabagh dam lobby is responsible for this termination decision, this lobby activated itself with a task of not letting the huge reservoirs of the Thar coal to be used in power plant, so that instead of thermal power hydel power gets the priority and ultimately Kalabagh dam appears as a  single  major  possibility  for  the  future  energy requirements. For this  purpose  no  allocation  was  made  for Sindh Coal Authority in the budget of 1997-98.

Informed sources have rejected the govt's claim of availability of surplus power in the country ,  on the contrary according to the World Bank Pakistan has to produce 1600 MW each year after 2001 and even nineteen existing projects ( mostly proposed to be set up in Punjab ) including  units of  CEPA can not fulfil the required power demand of the country. As for as the cost of electricity is concerned CEPA has rebutted the assertion that the electric unit generated by the Ketibander power  project  would  cost  Rs  4.5   per  unit (11 cents) and has clarified that according to the  agreement the company will sell the electric unit at the rate of Rs  2.27 (5.57-6.1 cents) to the Sindh govt. which would cost less than HUBCO and KAPCO plants and even less than the existing rates being charged by the WAPDA from its consumers. It is  the cheapest private power rate in the region. The principle of honoring of contractual obligations  is also involved in this case . A successor  government is not free   to  cancel a contract signed by its predecessor arbitrarily or on flimsy  grounds . The present policy of rejecting everything done by the previous incumbents will send the wrong signals to global investors.

In view of the above facts and circumstances Ketibander   project  has become a  subject of controversy between the federal government and the people of Sindh . It is evident that no default was committed by the CEPA  and all the statements and arguments of the federal  govt regarding Ketibander project are obviously baseless, ill conceived and ineffectual . People of Sindh who have already suffered a lot at the hands of terrorists , feudals and dacoits and who have been crushed by the vested interests , dictatorships, unemployment, inflation and corruption for the last fifty years now rightly demanding to be enabled/ allowed to enter the 21st century with proper provision of   basic   human  rights  and means and resources for sustainable economic development. Successful  completion  of Ketibander project is essential for Sindh as well as for the nation as a whole. We the people of Sindh strongly believe in equality , democracy, human rights and rule of law, and we really want to narrow  down  the  area of disagreement and widen the area of understanding and cooperation between the three small provinces on the one hand and the largest province on the other, but at the same time we oppose vehemently any conspiracy which may deprive Sindhis of their economic and human rights. It is a right time to speak of our  problems and our plight. We can not close our  eyes  to  the  fact that only an insignificant proportion of our country's  inhabitants  is   enjoying its benefits. The moment has come when development and prosperity should be for all. Everyone  must  understand that the fate and the future of Pakistan depends upon real solidarity of all peoples of Pakistan based upon equal treatment & opportunity for everyone.

For Further Information about Environment, Development, Gender and Human Rights in
Sindh, Pakistan and South Asia visit:
Sindh Research Page:  http://www.angelfire.com/az/Sindh/index.html
& Join Sindhorg Email List :   sindhorg-owner at egroups.com

M Ismail


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com