At the cost of industries: SSGC improves RLNG supply at sehri, iftar
- Domestic consumers will not be subject to the additional cost
The Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) has introduced an additional 20mmcfd of costlier, imported gas into its system to ensure uninterrupted supplies to households during sehri and iftar. The cost of this will be passed on to industrial consumers in Karachi, upper Sindh and Balochistan.
“We have injected additional supply of the gas from the first of Ramadan (March 2),” SSGC, Deputy Managing Director (DMD), Operations, Syed Muhammad Saeed Rizvi told Business Recorder.
Domestic consumers will not be subject to the additional cost, which is the difference between the imported gas (re-gasified liquid natural gas or RLNG) price and the tariff of indigenous gas for household consumers.
The government has announced RLNG gas price for SSGC at around $12mmbtu (around Rs3,360mmbtu) compared to SSGC selling indigenous gas to domestic consumers in the range of Rs200mmbtu to Rs4,200mmbtu – depending upon the volumetric consumption of gas, it was learnt.
Rizvi said that there was sufficient supply of gas in the system before induction of the additional supplies for residential consumers. However, the use of compressors by a section of consumers to receive high pressure gas was causing disruptions in supplies to those consumers who were not using the machines.
Despite the increased gas supplies in the system, many households have complained of gas outages at sehri and iftar.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif took notice of the complaints and asked both the federal utility firms - i.e. SSGC and SNGPL - to ensure uninterpreted gas supplies.
At the outset of ongoing Ramadan 2025, SSGC announced that it would be carrying out gas pressure profiling from 09:00am to 03:30pm and then again from 10:00pm to 03:00am.
Accordingly, the following schedule of gas supplies shall be maintained during the fasting month.
Gas availability timing:
03:00am to 09:00am
03:30pm to 10:00pm
Gas closure timing
09:00am to 03:30pm
10:00pm to 03:00am
The utility company is laying new gas pipelines in Karachi and other parts of Sindh, as well as in Balochistan, to improve the supply of natural gas to households, industries and commercial consumers, SSGC Deputy Managing Director, Operations, Rizvi added.
The firm is supplying 730 million cubic feet of gas per day (mmcfd) against a demand of 1,100 mmcfd, managing the deficit through industrial and household load management, he said.
SSGC services some 3.2 million consumers on its roughly 50,000 km long network in Sindh and Balochistan.
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