A meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Petroleum was held on December 12th at the Parliament House Islamabad where the committee suggested forming a local force to provide security to the recently discovered gas reserves in Khuzdar.
Addressing the gathering, the committee members said gas reserves were discovered in Khuzdar. Owing to the security issues in the region, the committee members decided to discuss the issue with Balochistan National Party Mengal (BNP-Mengal) chief Akhtar Mengal.
The committee proposed that the authorities form a local force comprising the people of the area where the gas fields were discovered to provide security to the reserves. The committee said the security forces would have no say in this matter and the gas extraction company would pay the local forces.
The committee said that Pakistan spends a significant portion of its GDP on importing gas from neighbouring countries. By extracting and effectively distributing the gas reserves in Khuzdar, the government can save billions of rupees annually.
The committee members said the biggest challenge facing gas extraction in the area is the Baloch “pro-independence” groups that are active in the area. These groups have termed the various “development projects” that are active in Balochistan as “exploitative” and carried out attacks targeting them, the committee members said.
It is pertinent to mention that Baloch nationalist circles argue that the Pakistani state is exploiting the resources of the people of Balochistan. They argue that the government extracts billions worth of natural resources from Balochistan, but gives nothing in return to its people.
The Baloch “pro-independence” groups have carried out various attacks targeting the “exploitative projects” in Balochistan, such as the CPEC and the oil and gas exploration efforts.
Before the discovery in Khuzdar, the Pakistani authorities announced the discovery of massive gas fields in Sheikhri, Kalat, in 2020. The authorities estimated that the fields contain a whopping 10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This is one of the largest natural gas reserves in the past seventeen years. It was estimated that the extraction would reduce the annual gas imports and save $900 million for Pakistan’s economy.
The authorities also discovered massive gas and petroleum reserves in Machh, Bolan, in 2018. Pakistani petroleum companies are extracting crude oil from the site daily.
The Baloch Liberation Army has carried out multiple attacks targeting the extraction site.