not begun in Pakistan and faces constant bureaucratic delays, a Pakistani official said last Wednesday.
The government was due to award a consultancy contract for the billion-dollar pipeline to Munich-based ILF Consulting Engineers a month ago, Karachi news report said. That would have marked the first step toward construction. Documents for the contract were prepared in early September, but they are now being redrafted for approval by Petroleum Minister Naveed Qamar and the special steering committee overseeing the project.
“The contract is for a feasibility study and route survey,” said an official who worked on the project until recently. “The study should have been in our hands by June 2010. We should have been working on the financial close by now. Business rules have to be followed. One official takes notes and then someone else proposes an action and it comes back with more questions.”
After a court intervened in a major LNG project, senior Petroleum Ministry officials are wary of pushing ahead with their recommendations, this official said. The Supreme Court had told off A. G. Sabri, a senior official of the Petroleum Ministry, in the LNG case.
“No one wants to risk his neck. This is such a technical subject with so many complexities involved,” the official said. “Who will take the decisions in such a situation?”
Pakistan is due to import 750 million cubic feet per day of gas from Iran through the pipeline. Iran says it has already laid the vast majority of the length of the pipeline on its territory.
