The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) is conducting a public hearing on determination of gas tariff for Sui Southern Gas Company Limited (SSGCL) in Karachi on Tuesday (today). According to Ogra officials, besides holding public hearing on consumers' gas prices for SSGCL the regulator will also take up the issue of CNG price in Sindh. The CNG station owners had started selling in litres instead of kilograms as approved by the regulator.
The authority is holding public hearing for tariff determination of SSGCL consumers on Tuesday while for the SNGPL consumers it will hold a public hearing on August 22 in Lahore. Sources said that the government has committed with the International Monetary Fund to increase consumers' gas prices and the regulator within a month will complete all the process and will submit the recommendations to the Ministry of Petroleum in September 2016. The government is likely to approve the Ogra recommendations in October and the tariff hike will be effective from July 1, 2016.
Gas utilities Sui-Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) and SSGCL in July had requested the Ogra to approve an increase of Rs 81 per Million British Thermal Units (MMBTU) and Rs 17.42 per MMBTU for consumer gas prices respectively. According to OGRA sources both the companies are facing 12-13 percent Unaccounted for Gas (UfG) losses, while Ogra has approved 4.5 percent UfG level, therefore both the companies are facing billion of revenue losses.
SNGPL with over 4.2 million consumers operates in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa (KPK, Punjab and (AJK) while SSGCL with 2 million consumers has operations in Sindh and Balochistan. Gas consumers on the network of SNGPL are paying Rs 510 per MMBTU, while on SSGCL network Rs 422 per MMBTU. Officials also said that the authority in September on the request of Petroleum Ministry and other stakeholders including SSGCL, SNGPL and Pakistan State Oil (PSO) will review Liquefied natural Gas (LNG) tariff for end consumers. They said that Pakistan since the inception of LNG import in March 2015 so far have imported 40 LNG ships each carrying 3.2 Billion Cubic Feet (BCF) of LNG.