KARACHI, 15 January 2005 — Police yesterday sealed off Dera Bugti and launched a house-to-house search for weapons around the country’s biggest gas field following attacks that closed its main plant and killed eight people. Many factories in northern Pakistan were without gas for a fourth day yesterday and authorities were not hopeful about the immediate resumption of supply.
A police officer said on condition of anonymity that large contingents of police from Jacobabad, Jaffarabad, Naseerabad and Rajanpur districts have been deployed to seal all exit and entry points of Dera Bugti. “So far there has been no arrest but the search operation is progressing well,” said local official Abdul Samad said.
Troops were sent to the facility on Tuesday after an attack which damaged and caused the closure of the plant, cutting off supplies to industrial units in the neighboring provinces.
“The immediate restoration of gas supply to the country is not possible,” the managing director of Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited, Abdul Rashid Lone, told state television.
A technical team is trying to reach Sui to repair the damaged pipeline, he added. The company is one of two which distributes gas from the plant.
There would also be temporary cuts for domestic consumers if supplies from Sui were not restored within two days, said the other distributor, Sui Southern Gas Pipelines Limited.
Government officials described the situation as tense but calm at Sui, where more than 1,000 paramilitary and regular troops are facing off against the rebel tribesmen a week after the violence broke out.
The tribesmen have been fighting for years to win more royalties and better jobs from the gas field but said the latest attacks were purely in revenge for the rape of a woman doctor working in the plant’s hospital.
The Cabinet of Balochistan, meeting in the provincial capital Quetta, asked the government not to send in the military against the rebels, who are from the area’s dominant Bugti tribe.
“The (provincial) Cabinet is of the view that there is no need for a military operation and the dispute with Bugti tribe should be resolved through dialogue,” Balochistan Home Minister Shoaib Nausherwani said.
The Cabinet has asked the federal government to take “direct control” of the entire Sui town and assume responsibility for its security, Nausherwani added.
Gas supplies could remain suspended for several more days, affecting more users, as security worries had delayed the start of repair work at the gas field.
A statement from state-run Pakistan Petroleum Ltd said damage to pipelines and the main purification plant had been more extensive than first thought. “Some critical instruments are badly damaged and need to be replaced,” the statement carried by the official APP news agency said. A PPL official said it was possible that domestic consumers around the country would face disruptions to their gas supplies in coming days.
Sui produces one billion cubic feet (28 million cubic meters) of gas per day, about 45 percent of Pakistan’s total production.
Yesterday, 10 employees of the state-run Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) abducted by tribesmen late on Tuesday northeast of Sui, were freed in a raid by security forces, Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said. “All of them are safe,” he said, but gave no details.
Industry experts said the series of violent attacks on the energy infrastructure in the country’s strategic southwest could have a major backlash on various multibillion gas pipeline projects. “This is something of concern to everybody,” Asian Development Bank (ADB) country chief Marshuk Ali Shah said, as the tribe’s chieftain predicted a major military assault.
The resource-rich province is a potential staging point for a number of gas pipeline projects which have been proposed to satisfy the demands of energy-hungry South Asia. One would carry gas from Iran to India while another parallel proposal would go from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan, and then possibly to India again.
But dissatisfaction is ripening among ethnic Baloch tribes, who blame Islamabad of purposely depriving them of the economic benefits from the natural gas and political rights they say they are guaranteed by the constitution.
A low-level uprising has been brewing for years in the region and similar attacks on the Sui gas fields two years ago caused winter gas shortages for millions of Pakistanis.
“These projects are no good for us — they are only a source of earning money (for Islamabad) by selling gas to India,” said influential tribal chief Nawab Akbar Bugti, the province’s former governor and chief minister.
