KARACHI: Ignoring public safety concerns and environment, the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) recently allowed M/s Pakistan International Bulk Terminal (PIBT) Limited to build a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) terminal project at its existing facility.

The approval to the project — which involves transfer of LPG from carrier vessels to the pipelines that would carry it to the customer storage facility — has come more than five months after the department had shared the project’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) report at a public hearing.

Sources said that the department had granted a no-objection certificate (NOC) to the project currently lacking a comprehensive risk assessment, though one of Sepa’s top officials had committed at the project’s public hearing held in June that a presentation on project’s (quantitative) risk assessment would be organised later.

The public hearing had seen strong opposition to the venture proposed at the PIBT — a facility meant exclusively to handle coal, clinker and cement under an agreement it had with Port Qasim Authority (PQA).

Some stakeholders at the hearing had described handling of coal and LPG at the same jetty as a ‘recipe for disaster’ and demanded recall of the public hearing as, they argued, project’s environmental impact assessment report lacked sufficient data and had totally ignored the risk of multiple fatalities from a single mishap.

They also questioned whether the PQA master plan currently available on its website was federally approved and notified and, if that’s the case, there was no provision for such a project in that master plan, they had contended.

The environmental watchdog also came under criticism for clearing LPG’s storage facility, a project posing similar threats to life and safety, under its Initial Environmental Exam­ination procedures, which required no public hearing. The IEE report was also not available on Sepa’s website for public viewing.

Agreeing with concerns related to public and environmental safety, Waqar Hussain Phulpoto, additional director general at Sepa, had committed at the June 25 public hearing that a presentation on the project’s quantitative risk assessment would be organised later.

Sources said no presentation on project’s risk assessment had been organised by Sepa even after five months. It, however, had bound the project proponent to carry out a risk assessment study before project’s operation.

“That, M/s Pakistan International Bulk Terminal Limited shall conduct a risk assessment study before the operation of the project for handling, transportation and storage of LPG.

“The report should include all the possible scenarios including worst case scenario in which any incident may occur during the process and same will be submitted to Sindh EPA,” a copy of the NOC dated Nov 27 shows.

The certificate is subject to a number of conditions, such as the proponent would comply with the environmental act, its rules and regulations, all the mitigation measures recommended in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report and engage an independent environmental monitoring consultant.

Dr Syed Raza Ali Gardezi, general secretary at Citizens for Environment, who had submitted his comments on the project in writing to Sepa at the June public hearing, criticised Sepa for according approval to the project without getting a quantitative risk assessment done.

He also accused Sepa of favouring the project proponent as the department acted on behalf of the project proponent and forwarded PIBT’s reply to the concerns raised by him during the public hearing instead of giving its feedback on the comments.

“The proponent took five months to prepare a 200-300 page response to our comments. We received this response with Sepa’s covering letter on Nov 25 and before we could even go through the response, we found that the project has been given an EIA approval on Nov 27,” he said, criticising the department for not even waiting for the counter-reply.

No Sepa official was available for comments.

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2019