Gas supply to Faisalabad industries suspended for one week

Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) has suspended gas supply to Faisalabad industries from May 21 to 27, which will badly affect the textile industries facing severe loadshedding of electricity and thousands of workers become jobless for another one week.
Mian Zahid Aslam President Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FCCI) said the discrimination in gas supply to industries in Faisalabad would not be bearable, while SNGPL had failed to provide uninterrupted supply of gas to industries and need to be privatised.
Commenting over the prevailing situation, he said gas supply to Faisalabad industries had been suspended from May 21 to 27, which would pile up the production jobs further as four-day curtailment in a week of gas had already reduced the production activities particularly in the textile processing. He maintained that industries in Faisalabad were consistently fall prey to the gas shortage which had resulted into loss of export orders of billions of rupees as well as inability to cater the domestic demand.
He said Faisalabad industries particularly the textile sector was heavily dependent on natural gas for wet processing. It is not understood that in the summer when domestic demand becomes minimal, curtailment of gas to the industries is on the same pattern as for peak demand period. He said loss was not only in financial terms for export earnings to the country but also losing hard-earned international markets and trust of foreign buyers for non-compliance of their orders by textile exporters in the area.
He said demand for natural gas in the country had increased by almost 10 percent annually for the last many years and demand-supply gap was forecast to rise from 1,216 mmcfd (million cubic feet per day) in 2011-12 to 2,092 mmcfd in 2015-16, thus demand for natural gas exceeding the available supply in the next two to three years. He maintained that even the supply from Iran-Pakistan Pipeline would not suffice and full focus needs to be made on exploration of gas reserves in the country.