Tender document to be made available soon: Shahid Khaqan

LNG Terminal

Sees no attempts to favour any company

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi Friday said some parties had managed to download tender document from the website of Pakistan LNG Limited Company for installation of an LNG terminal at Port Qasim and the website may now have faced technical issues which will be resolved soon.

A senior official at the Ministry of Petroleum confided to The News that though the Government Holding Pubic Limited (GHPL) had kick-started the process for installation of an LNG terminal at Port Qasim, the process was too much ambiguous, as an advertisement was given in the national dailies on December 15 having tight deadlines with no tender documents issued so far to the interested parties.

“So much so, no request for proposal (RFP) document is available so far and on top of that the GHPL has not hired an international consultant to this effect,” the official said, adding: “This has given a birth to many rumors that the RFP is being carved out in such a way that a  foreign company that has so far won over 90 percent tenders for spot purchasing of LNG for Pakistan and has also recently managed to win tender of 60 LNG shipment till 2020 may be accommodated.”

The GHPL has initiated the process to install the FRSU based LNG terminal at Port Qasim keeping in view the decision of ECC dated November 2015 by giving an advertisement on December 15, 2015 under which the bid submission will be done on January 25, 2016 and LNG sales agreement will be inked on February 29, 2016 and the CoD (date of commissioning) will be March 1, 2017.

The official said the said dates were very difficult to meet particularly when the tender documents have not so far been issued to the interested parties and interestingly there is no RFP available with any interested party. And the implementation time of 12 months has been allowed.

So under this scenario, the official said, deadlines are not possible to meet. However, speculations in the ministry suggest that such deadlines have been fixed by design with no tender documents available so far and no RFP document is available with the interested parties. This has made extremely difficult for the interested parties to meet the said deadlines.

When contacted, Mr. Shahid Islam, Managing director of GHPL, admitted that tender documents’ availability got delayed because of some technical issues.

“Now the technical issues are over and the tender documents will be uploaded on the website of GHPL/PLTL sometime tonight or tomorrow.”

He said the LNG terminal will be having the capacity for 600 million cubic feet LNG per day.

The minister said that bid submission date was 25 January and on January 24 parties qualifying for the bid will be convened and they will be provided the LSA (LNG sales agreement) document. This is how they will be having over 30 days to go through the LSA document.

Asked if the RFP was being designed in such a way to accommodate the foreign company, the minister said the RFP was the same that was pitched for LNG terminal awarded to EETPL. The structure of the RFP is the same.

However, there are slight changes in the RFP format as in the earlier tender document for EETPL LNG terminal it was mentioned that in first two years 200 mmcfd LNG will be imported and then it will increase up to 400 mmcfd. But in this case, 400 mmcfd will be imported from day one.

The handling capacity of the new terminal would be around 600 mmcfd. So the impression being that the RFP has designed it in a manner to award any foreign company is baseless and carries no weight.

Meanwhile, the Port Qasim Authority (PQA), while quoting LNG policy 2011, in a letter to GHPL managing director dated December 15, a copy of which is available with The News, has expressed concern while locating the site of LNG terminal by GHPL and stated that the LNG developers were needed to select the site in LNG zone or adjoining Creeks of Chhara Wadde for FRSU or land based terminal and accordingly PQA will proceed for an NOC. 

In the letter it was mentioned that the PQA has so far allocated sites in LNG zone to three LNG developers which include Pak Gasport-FOTCO (that has been given the site at Mazhar Point), GEIP (that has been given the site at Jhari Creek in LNG Zone) and Akber Associate (Khalid Point).