ISLAMABAD, Nov 6: The Oil and Gas Development Company’s employees union has sought intervention of the prime minister and the president to stop privatisation of the Qadirpur Gas Field, which generates $155million annual revenue and accounts for over 30 per cent of OGDCL’s total gas production.

Speaking at a news conference here on Thursday, General Secretary of the OGDCL CBA Mohammad Aqleem Khan and other officer-bearers threatened to launch a protest drive against the privatisation of what they called a “national asset” and “backbone of Pakistan’s energy generation” if both the political leaders did not put off sale of the gas field immediately.

“We can even sacrifice our lives to save this national asset,” observed President of the OGDCL Officers Association Aslam Khan Niazi.

“If the field was sold to foreign companies, they would sell gas at $7 per mmbtu (million British thermal unit), while the OGDCL was selling it at Rs124 per unit.

Mr Niazi said that gas would become so much expensive that fertiliser and chemical industries of Punjab would not be able to operate.

The country would be strangulated economically as gas from Qadirpur would not be available to power generation companies anymore and electricity consumers would have to pay high charges for power generated through thermal.

The workers said that it was beyond their comprehension as to what had made the government to decide to put on sale a “profit-making” gas field in which, they say, British Petroleum and Austria’s OMV were interested.

The leaders said that the Privatisation Commission had valued the total assets of the gas field at $2billion while its real cost was over $7billion.

The OGDCL has so far extracted 1.7trillion cubic feet from one zone of Qadirpur gas field alone, while two other fields are yet to be dug.

The OGDCL has put total gas reserves from the field at 2.5 trillion cubic feet.

The union leaders said that while valuing the gas field, the authorities had not included the value of the remaining two zones which were yet to be put in use by the OGDCL.

“This is a scandal bigger than that of the sale of Pakistan Steel which could not materialise owing to the timely intervention of the Supreme Court of Pakistan,” said union’s president, Chaudhry Mohammad Akram.

He said that workers would also get a stay from the court against the controversial sale of Qadirpur gas field.

He said that the OGDCL was producing 64 per cent of the total oil production of the country, while the remaining 34 per cent was produced by 30 multinational companies altogether.

They said the gas field also paid $40.57million annual royalty, $10.59million in excise duty to the government, $52.3million in sales tax and $79.08million in income tax.

Its sale would create numerous problems for the country within a few years and its industry would crumble like a house of cards, he warned and appealed to all industrialists of the country to come out and oppose the sale of the gas field for the sake of Pakistan’s future.