KARACHI:
Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) is fast recovering its gas shortfall, after the completion of a 22-day annual turnaround (ATA) at one of its biggest gas fields, which will restore full supply to the consumers, a top official of the company said.
“ATA of Bhit gas field was completed on Thursday but we expect that full supply will be restored by Monday,” SSGC Deputy Managing Director Azim Iqbal Siddiqui said, adding “the overall situation is much better now than what we saw over the last few weeks.”
Talking to The Express Tribune, Siddiqui said that gas distribution is still difficult for the company owing to the overall decline of 70 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) compared to May 2010.
The overall gas supply of the company has reduced to 1,080 mmcfd from 1,155 mmcfd over the last one year, which is a cause for concern, as gas demand continues to rise unlike its supply, he added.
SSGC reduced gas supply to its main consumers during the Bhit field maintenance, in which the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) was also affected, resulting in prolonged power outages in the city.
Siddiqui said that his company is supplying 160 to 170 mmcfd of gas to KESC, despite facing shortage in its system, keeping in view the people’s interests.
However, KESC demands 200 to 276 mmcfd to produce power and reduce outages. “SSGC is supplying 160 mmcfd, which is far below our demand owing to which we resort to outages,” a KESC spokesperson said.
He said that power production from furnace oil instead of gas pushes up cost by more than three times. Two major independent power producers (IPPs), Tapal and Gul Ahmed, which provide 225 megawatts of power to KESC, had also been shut down for three days owing to shortage of furnace oil, he added.
In this regard, a Pakistan State Oil (PSO) statement informed that PSO had allocated 900 tons of furnace oil to Tapal and 500 tons to Gul Ahmed power plants on Thursday.
Meanwhile, KESC and PSO are at loggerheads over the issue of furnace oil supply. KESC said that PSO had stopped supplies, a claim PSO rejected. PSO said that it had supplied 3,000 tons of furnace oil to KESC on Wednesday and Thursday.
Furthermore, PSO claimed that it had offered KESC furnace oil that had initially been allocated for Tapal and Gul Ahmed power plants, which could not be delivered due to the strike call for May 4 by the oil tanker associations. However, PSO said KESC chose not to avail of this opportunity and gave no response.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 6th, 2011.
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ