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| CJ suspension: was oil mafia involved? |
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Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Ansar Abbasi
ISLAMABAD: The high and mighty of the oil and gas mafia in the country is said to have played a role in the removal of the Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
Amid different stories echoing around as the reason for the chief justice’s removal, a source claimed that the poor chief justice was the victim of the oil and gas mafia. “Justice Iftikhar had tried to extend the long arm of the judiciary to nab the head honcho of the oil mafia by impleading them in a constitutional petition challenging the alleged overcharging in oil pricing for approximate 250 billions of rupees by refineries and oil marketing companies,” the source said.
The source said that when the chief justice was hearing the case on February 22, 2007, little did he know that he was exposing the untouchables for causing colossal financial losses to the national economy. “He dared to touch the gods of the petroleum industry, who in their nefarious planned manoeuvre opted to drag the chief justice into the dirty waters to save their own skin,” the source, who also belongs to the oil industry, said.
Their manoeuvring of oil prices to the advantage of the refineries and oil marketing companies has now become common knowledge to the ordinary citizens of Pakistan but still no one, the Public Accounts Committee, the National Assembly and the Senate standing committees on petroleum so much so even the NAB could not dare touch the oil mafia for the reasons best known to the authorities concerned, the source said.
The source demanded of the government to probe into the policies of oil pricing, refinery margins, distribution margins and deregulating the oil imports because of which a staggering amount of $7-8 billion per year was handed over to the hand-picked chief executives of selected multinational and the national companies in the oil and gas sector.
These refineries and oil marketing companies, it is said, were allowed to import petroleum products where the prices were manipulated to their advantage, which have now been proven beyond doubt by the inquiries conducted by the Senate standing committee and the National Accountability Bureau.
The Supreme Court, the source said, took notice of this situation where all the people involved in this scam were flourishing and being moved from one important position to the other like a cartel.
On the other hand, the source said that the government has started privatising the public sector companies one by one. For example the National Refinery, according to the source, was privatised in 2006 at a throw-away price of Rs 16 billion, while an inquiry by the NAB Sindh was pending in which billions of rupees were misappropriated.
The PSO is next in line to be privatised by the middle of June 2007. The source claimed that the NAB is also probing certain cases relating to the PSO affairs. It is said that despite being the market leader in the petroleum industry, the PSO had to suffer 66 per cent in its profitability for the half year July 2006 to December 2006. The source said that the PSO also announced a 66 per cent fall in its first half profit recently.
The board of management of the PSO, the source said, reported this while reviewing the performance and accounts of the company for the first half of year 2006-07.The PSO, which is set to be privatised before the fiscal year ends on June 30, reported a net profit of Rs 1.4 billion ($18.8 million) for six months to Dec.31, 2006, down from Rs 3.35 billion for the same period previous year.
According to the announcement, the profitability of oil marketing companies in the first half of the year was affected by a number of factors, including inventory gains where OCAC (Oil Companies Advisory Committee) was setting oil prices and increasing it every fortnight giving windfall profits to OMCS (oil marking companies) but due to hue and cry by the public and the parliamentarians the Supreme Court took up the matter and the Ministry of Petroleum was forced to transfer the oil pricing to Ogra on April 1, 2006. Since then the OMCS have been deprived of these undue benefits.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
