Natural gas will only be available to domestic consumers this winter and will not be supplied to other sectors due to a rising shortage in Punjab, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said on Monday.Speaking at a press conference, the minister said that only 1150mmcfd (million cubic feet per day) of gas was available in the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) system, of which 350mmcfd was Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s share. That would leave only 800mmcfd for Punjab, against its peak domestic demand of over 900 mmcfd.After giving KP its share, the remaining gas “would stand consumed entirely in the domestic sector”, the minister said. He said that 2.9 billion cubic feet per day were available in the system at the time of the 18th Amendment in 2010, which had come down to 2.4bcfd because of the depletion of existing reservoirs. As a consequence, SNGPL’s share had now dropped from 1,700mmcfd to 1,150mmcfd. On the other hand, gas production in Sui Southern Gas Company’s (SSGC) system had increased from 1200mmcfd to 1,250mmcfd. The lack of good news was not unexpected. But what is surprising is that we are still talking about the problems, and tossing around various hypothetical solutions such as regulating LPG all over again as an alternative to natural gas, past the midpoint of this government’s term.This state of affairs was known many years ago, long before the current government came to power, and yet the minister is talking about these problems as if they materialised only yesterday. By now we reasonably expected that the conversation would be about the progress made towards resolving these problems, but it seems we still have not moved forward.The fact that this is happening in the third year of the government’s rule shows a grave situation has developed in the energy sector, and his own words at the news conference indicated that the minister has precious little to show by way of progress.
pk.shafaqna.com
