Gas in Pakistan

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2002:
 
KARACHI, Pakistan–Natural gas exploration and extraction in
Kirthar National Park is apparently proceeding quietly, five months
after the Sindh High Court on October 4 dismissed a petition against
it brought by a coalition of nine Pakistani nonprofit organizations.
The verdict came as U.S. President George W. Bush pressured Pakistan
to crack down on public displays of anti-Americanism, but it crushed
an unusually American-like expression of dissent, in a nation with
little history of activism on behalf of animals and habitat.

Pakistan authorized the joint venture by Premier Exploration
Pakistan Ltd. and Shell Pakistan in 1997. Objections from the Sindh
Wildlife Department were quelled by amending the Pakistani Wildlife
Act to specifically allow gas extraction in Kirthar National Park.
The nine nonprofit groups contended, according to Dawn
Internet of Karachi, that the gas project would bring the
extirpation of “a sizable population of ibex, urial (a wild sheep),
chinkara gazelles, various families of reptiles, and 58 bird
species,” some of which would be put at risk of extinction.