Signatory Deal Made Easy

Signatory deal

in February 2016 Pakistan State oil and Qatar gas agreed on a liquid nitrogen gas deal worth 16 billion dollars in a signing ceremony in Doha in attendance then petroleum minister shahid Hakan Abbasi and brother gasps Sherman Saad Sherita along with 10 Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim since then Hakan Abbasi and former finance minister mr. smile have been arrested by the national continuity bureau partly for their role in the game but while NAB's investigation is primarily focused on the distribution side of the deal alleging that a bossy and a smile contracted the LNG terminal to 15 companies of their choice some also claimed the LNG deal itself does not represent good value for money for Pakistan this secretive 15 year deal between the two nations took place despite the economic coordination committee's recommendations in 2012 that the deal designed after holding international competitive bidding the pml-n government trumpeted the long-term deal as a success but any objective assessment of the deal was difficult since the only official copy was heavily redacted and although CCI had initially promised to publish the deal in full and to went back on its word and the deal remains redacted until now such videos discovered that a simple copy/paste technique reveals the entirety of the document including he previously redacted clauses clauses such as the contract price thirteen point three seven percent the possibility of price review ten years cancellation if within six months of requesting the price review of consensus can't be reached then either side can cancel the agreement and also unimportant details like the maximum lay time allowed for the unloading of each LNG vessel shall be 48 hours was redacted this really necessary you too can gain access to the document simply by going on the PSO website searching Qatar LNG deal clicking the tock results and copy pasting any redacted section into another document so why was this LNG deal so hush-hush according to a tough Pakistani official that spoke with the news the BTS change of heart came after message from Qatar that knew laterally unveiling the deal could result in serious consequences such as a transformation of the view which could drastically cut electricity production and plunge Pakistan into darkness not like that doesn't happen anyway now that we have uncovered the confidential clauses of this secret agreement we can actually begin to analyze whether the agreement is good for Pakistan the first key issue is that a price the Auditor General's report on the deal he noted that the price negotiated with Qatar was higher than the rates on the open market however the report did not quote any specific rates on the open market so it is unclear how much lower the rates could have live but business record a report of a crime that Italian gas giant Eni had made an offer of twelve point two nine percent of Brent crude for 15 years however the Pakistani government dismissed Ian's eyes offer cleaning it was technically not compliant if Pakistan had taken ionised offer we could have potentially saved millions of dollars in energy imports by now the second key issue concerns the price review Clause as noted by international experts price review process increasingly play a vital role in LNG agreements in India successfully utilized Christ's review in 2015 to have the price it was paying for LNG imports from Qatar although proponents of parkson's LNG deal note an India is still paying more for its LNG than Pakistan however Pakistan is locked into its negotiated rate for the next 10 years despite the fact that global LNG spot prices have generally been falling since 2014 although the trend is not LNG prices are expected to fall even further in the near future due to oversupply and an ongoing negotiations with Pakistan over a new LNG deal Qatar has reportedly proposed rates in the region of 11.25 to 11.5% of Brent crude what a lot Pakistan could've gotten or better lng deal is up for debate that debate however can not be rooted in evidence unless the government is willing to transparently disclose its dealings any presenting the deal to a Senate committee being so claimed that it could not publicly reveal the agreement due to confidentiality clauses senators in the committee were allowed to see an unredacted version of the agreement but they're not allowed to take a copy home the BSO's claim of confidentiality was reportedly also used to redact access to the deal to build the auditor-general of Pakistan as well as the Competition Commission of Pakistan but the agreements confidentiality clause explicitly states that the deal can be shared with the signatories shareholders and affiliates provided that they are not competitors in the LNG market or use the information for commercial advantage since Pakistan signatory in the deal PSO includes both the government of Pakistan as well as the general public in its shareholders there seems no reason for the agreement to not be at least vetted by the Auditor General the Competition Commission as well as the National Assembly and even though several countries sometimes redact the public versions of their energy deals there is no precedent for governments refusing to reveal unredacted documents to their own agencies responsible for oversight which raises the question what was there to hide and who wanted it hidden even the government's claim of not being able to share the deal with the public was then contradicted by a granting international publication Bloomberg access to the unredacted document why the government wanted to trumpet the deal ceilings claiming it had successfully paid off two firms against each other to reduce the contract price of LNG thirteen point nine percent to thirty point three seven percent of Brent crude so according to our government Bloomberg is allowed to see the unredacted deal but the taxpayers that elected the government and are funding this very deal apparently don't have that right the Competition Commission of Pakistan report on the deal noted the harmful effects of this lack of transparency and principally in a Democratic Society agreements such as these should always be made public to the citizens with negotiations over new LNG deal with Qatar now under ways one can hope that the current government needs the lessons of the past and is transparent in its future dealings and in the meantime they should at least learn that you can't just use the highlighter tool on Microsoft Office to redact the document [Music]