The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources has shown its inability to continue gas supply to five Independent Power Plants (IPPs), official said. According to officials, the management has not only stopped gas supply to the IPPs with which it had gas supply agreements, but also deprived those plants, with which there was no agreement.
Stating the reason of gas cut to IPPs, the official said the Ministry was supplying gas to power plants as per written agreements, but the management of the plants failed to pay the gas price. "We have also stopped gas supply to other power plants due to gas shortage in the country. Currently our gas supply stands at 4.25 billion cubic feet per day, while gas demand has reached 6.5 billion cubic feet per day, and due to worsening supply/demand gap Sui-Northern Gas Pipelines (SNPGL) has stopped gas supply to industries in Punjab too," the official revealed.
These five power plants were producing over 1,000 megawatts of electricity and with the annual canal closure starting from December 26, it is expected that power shortage will once again severely hit the masses. Gas supply to compressed natural gas (CNG) stations also remains suspended for three days on the network of SNGPL and two on the network of Sui-Southern Gas Company Limited.
At present power shortage was around 4,000 megawatts, which was expected to touch 6,000 megawatts after December 26, the official said. The official said that at present the gap between gas supply/demand had forced the Ministry to cut gas supply to all the industries to meet the requirements of domestic consumers. The government has also failed in supplying gas to fertiliser sector. Last year the government decided to divert gas consumed by fertiliser sector on SNGPL system to power sector in a bid to deal with electricity shortage.
An official of SNGPL, when contacted, said that to provide uninterrupted gas to domestic consumers the company was curtailing gas supply for five days to the industrial sector as well as three-day gas suspension for CNG sector. But, at the same time domestic consumers have also complained that they were facing low pressure of gas particularly in the morning and in the evening.
To deal with the gas crisis the government should expedite exploration of local gas reservoirs, as Pakistan had highest success ratio and out of 100 drilled wells about 33.33 were successful, he said. "Since last four years the exploration activities are at standstill as high government functionaries focused on imported gas projects like LNG, Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), Iran-Pakistan (IP) and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipelines projects. These projects are of vital importance for the energy security of the country, but first we need to explore and utilise local reservoirs," the official maintained.
As per Ministry officials, "currently 133 licenses for exploration of oil and gas are operating. A total 100 exploratory wells were drilled during last four years. As a result of these efforts, 39 oil and gas discoveries have been made, which are under evaluation for reserve estimation."