Indiscriminate buying for commission, 100 crore worth of goods scrapped | Indiscriminate buying for commission, 100 crore worth of goods scrapped

In the storage yard of Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation Limited (GSPCL), one of the Navratna companies of the Gujarat government, the goods worth crores of rupees, including pipes, drilling machines, chemicals, Saudi sand, are rotting. The estimated price of such goods goes up to 100 crores. The then officials of the company bought such goods indiscriminately till the year 2008. The goods were purchased in excess of the estimate due to the lure of getting commission from the purchase. At that time, GSPCL had estimated that 80 to 90 sites in Gujarat would be working on gas and oil extraction, but due to lack of proper reserves, the equipment purchased for this purpose is now completely useless. People’s money is being wasted as such expensive goods purchased from the money received by the government from the taxes of common citizens are completely wasted. At present, security has been put in place here, but at any time such goods can be stolen. There is also fear that such goods will be sold in the black market. GSPCL has stopped offshore drilling for a long time now and onshore drilling is going on only at five sites and that too very marginally. Due to non-availability of new reserves of gas and oil, the goods purchased by GSPCL are completely useless.

GSPCL has decided to tighten security at its sites following the recent thefts from GSPCL’s oil depots, but for the past fifteen years there is no accounting for what might have happened to these goods.