Credit : Fahmi Fadzil's X
KUALA LUMPUR, November 11, 2026 – Communications Minister Datuk Seri Fahmi Fadzil has drawn attention to two pipeline projects cancelled in 2018, saying contractors were paid 88 per cent of the contract value when reported work progress stood at only 13 per cent, leaving the public to bear the remaining debt.
In a video posted on X on Wednesday night, Fahmi identified the projects as the Multi-Product Pipeline, a petroleum pipeline on the peninsula, and the Trans-Sabah Gas Pipeline. An on-screen graphic in the video, carrying a Finance Ministry crest and citing the prime minister’s question time in the Dewan Rakyat on November 3, 2026, named both projects and set out the same 88 per cent and 13 per cent figures. The graphic noted that some images were used for illustration.
“Imagine you hire a contractor to build a house. After two years, the house is only 13 per cent complete, but the contractor has already received 88 per cent of the payment. Does that make sense?” he said. “This is what happened in two pipeline projects valued at RM9.4 billion.”
He said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had recently explained the projects in Parliament. Both, Fahmi said, were approved in 2016 and awarded to a Chinese contractor through direct negotiation, without an open tender. “But the strangest part is that in 2018 the contractor had already been paid RM8.3 billion, or 88 per cent of the contract value, while reported work progress was only 13 per cent,” he said. He attributed that mismatch to payments being made according to a time schedule rather than actual construction progress.
Those figures match what Anwar told the Dewan Rakyat on November 3, as reported by The Star. Anwar said the two projects, together worth RM9.4 billion, had been awarded through direct negotiations to China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau, financed largely by loans from the Export-Import Bank of China and guaranteed by the federal government. By 2018, he said, about RM8.3 billion, or 88 per cent of the contract value, had been paid despite reported progress of only 13 per cent, a progress figure he said had not been audited or verified. Both contracts were later terminated in 2018.
Fahmi said the projects were never completed, yet the country still had to bear a loan obligation of about RM8 billion, and that the people of Sabah did not receive the benefit of the promised gas pipeline. He then pointed to what he called an important development: an agreement reached on October 30, following negotiations by the Madani government, to redirect RM5 billion of that financing to the Northern Perak water supply scheme, which also benefits Penang.
Life News Agency reported that agreement when it was signed, in a story on October 31. Anwar told Parliament on November 3 that the restructuring would reduce the country’s potential losses from RM8 billion to RM3 billion by channelling the RM5 billion into the Northern Perak–Penang Water Supply Scheme. Fahmi repeated that reduced-loss figure in the video, while adding that RM3 billion was “still a lot of money — the people’s money.”
He also said efforts to strengthen electricity supply in Sabah were continuing through the Sabah Southern Madani Link and a battery energy storage system in Lahad Datu, and that Anwar had stressed the investigation into the case had not been closed. “That is why governance and integrity matter,” Fahmi said. “So now, the issue of 88 per cent paid and 13 per cent of the work completed. Who should be held responsible? Think about it.”
Source: Fahmi Fadzil on X, with additional reporting from Anwar’s November 3 remarks in the Dewan Rakyat, as reported by The Star, and from Life News Agency’s earlier report on the October 30 agreement.
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