Pakistan gets bids for 15 out of 20 blocks
Response remains poor in second round of bidding for exploration blocks
PHOTO: REUTERS
ISLAMABAD:
Pakistan has received a rather poor response in the second round of awarding exploration blocks for onshore exploration rights to oil and gas production companies as it received bids for 15 out of a total of 20 blocks.
Sources told The Express Tribune that the Director General Petroleum Concession (DGPC) - a wing of the Petroleum Division - sought bids for 20 exploration blocks across the country in a bid to attract investment in the energy sector and boost exploration activities to enhance oil and gas production.
SHC annuls preventive detention order for acquitted BLA man
Karachi
December 22, 2020
The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Monday struck down the prevention detention order of a proscribed organisation’s activist who was acquitted in the Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) car bombing case in April this year. The high court, however, allowed the Sindh government to monitor activities of the man under the anti-terrorism law.
The order came on a petition of Aziza Naeem who challenged the detention of her son-in-law Abdul Hameed Bugti under the anti-terrorism law. She had submitted in her petition that her son-in-law remained incarcerated in prison for his alleged involvement in the PIDC car bombing case for the last 14 years and he was exonerated by the SHC on April 9 due to lack of evidence. However, the prison authorities refused to release him and first detained him under the Maintenance of Public Order and later under 11-EEE of the anti-terrorism law.
PSEs - they can’t breathe on their own - I
Successive govts have failed to come up with viable plan to stop, reverse losses
December 20, 2020
The government could not afford to keep paying salaries to employees without any production in the steel mill and a decision should be taken soon to avoid further losses. PHOTO: FILE
LONDON:
Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) and Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) are in news again and we all know the reasons.
The sustained failure of governments to successfully run them says a lot about priorities of the rulers. PSM was supposed to serve as the mainstay of industrial development, however, its mismanagement reached such levels that since 2006 governments have made attempts on a number of occasions to dispose it off to the private sector.
Market watch: KSE-100 climbs to 30-month high
Benchmark index gains 406.5 points to settle at 43,766.69
Shares of 416 companies were traded. At the end of the day, 304 stocks closed higher. PHOTO: FILE
KARACHI:
Bull-run continued at the Pakistan stock market on Thursday as the KSE-100 index extended gains by 407 points primarily due to a rally in global oil prices, which lifted the bourse to a 30-month high.
International oil benchmarks, which soared to a nine-month high, sparked buying interest in exploration and production and oil marketing companies’ sectors at the Pakistan bourse.
Dismal foreign direct investment (FDI) data, which depicted an outflow of $16 million in November 2020, failed to impact market activity as sentiment of market participants remained strong throughout the session. Improving macroeconomic indicators, coupled with a drop in political noise, overshadowed any negative news flow.
Better decisions
December 10, 2020
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,