Better decisions

Genealogy is as important to Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) as geology to its core business. The brutal and blatant haemorrhaging of the company’s financial resources frittered away between March 2015 and June 2018 is now a sad and sordid episode of the recent past. The foundations of the company were recklessly shaken in the garb of implementing a controversial hybrid asset-based management system. Even the aggressive drilling history during this turbulent period was not professionally envisioned. The company, therefore, had to absorb some staggering financial outlays.

The toxic effects of that era are not yet gone as the board room politics is still riveting the company in many ways. Let’s hope that the new directors to be selected in late December will have the relevant experience and will act independently. Be there no doubt that if a spate of non-executive directors is placed on the board as usual from our dysfunctional bureaucracy, it will become impossible for PPL to look at every growth opportunity on its merit and recover the lost ground. I have always believed that a bureaucrat in a board room is like a bull in a china shop.

Haroon Rashid Siddiqi

Karachi