Beneath the technical language of ministerial summaries and constitutional articles, a familiar contest is playing out in Pakistan’s energy sector one about power, ownership, and where the line sits between running things efficiently and honoring the deal the provinces struck with the center.
What sparked the row
The federal government floated an idea that, on paper, sounds like simple housekeeping. It sent a proposal to the Council of Common Interests (CCI) the body designed to arbitrate between the center and the provinces suggesting that everyday administrative decisions in the hydrocarbon sector shouldn’t have to pass across the council’s desk. The logic: routine matters clog up a forum meant for bigger questions, so let regulators and ministries just get on with them.
The summary went out for feedback to a long list of stakeholders the finance and planning ministries, the law ministry, the Cabinet Division, the Attorney General, and crucially, all four provincial governments. And that’s where the tidy housekeeping story fell apart.
Four provinces, four shades of “no”
None of the provinces gave an unqualified yes, but they didn’t object in unison either. The differences are revealing.
Punjab came closest to going along with it. It agreed regulators should be free to operate independently under the rules and policies already on the books. But it attached a price: if the CCI is going to step back, then every province not just federal appointees deserves a seat at the table in regulatory bodies like the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra). And if a province doesn’t like a decision, it should still be able to kick the matter up to the CCI. In effect, Punjab said fine, streamline it but build the provinces into the machinery and keep an escape hatch.
Sindh planted its flag on the Constitution. It pointed to Article 172(3), which it reads as establishing joint and equal ownership of oil and gas between the federation and whichever province the resources sit under including adjacent territorial waters. If a province is a co-owner and co-licensor, Sindh argued, then administrative authority can’t simply be handed to the center. Its counter-proposal was pointed: such matters should belong jointly to the federal and provincial governments, without needing the CCI’s involvement.
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa sang from a similar hymn sheet. It acknowledged Parliament’s power to legislate but insisted that power can’t be wielded against the spirit of Article 172(3). Translation: the center can pass laws, but not ones that quietly erase the provinces’ constitutional stake.
Balochistan drew the sharpest distinction of all between policy and operations. Policy and any amendments, it said, should keep flowing through the CCI for approval. But once the CCI has set the guidelines, individual regulatory calls can be left to the relevant regulator. Excluding the council from administrative matters entirely, Balochistan warned, simply isn’t defensible when you read Articles 154, 156 and 172(3) together with Entry 2 of the Fourth Schedule — provisions it believes hand the CCI a genuinely supervisory role over how the country’s oil and gas are managed.
Why this keeps happening
Strip away the article numbers and you’re left with the defining fault line of Pakistan’s federal politics since the 18th Amendment: the center wants to move fast, and the provinces want to protect the autonomy that amendment promised them especially over the natural resources buried in their own soil.
The CCI was built precisely to referee this kind of clash. So it’s telling that the federal proposal essentially asks the referee to sit out the smaller plays. The provinces, in their different registers, are all making a version of the same argument back: the small plays add up, and a resource you jointly own isn’t something the other partner gets to administer alone.
How this settles will say a lot about the real balance of power in Pakistan’s federation not the version written in the Constitution, but the one that operates day to day.