‘Domestic consumers getting uninterrupted gas supply’

Under Article 158, gas-producing provinces have first right of use over natural resource found in their jurisdictions

ISLAMABAD: Power Minister Omar Ayub Khan on Saturday said uninterrupted gas supply is being provided to the domestic consumers on a priority basis across the country.

“The government is giving preference to the domestic consumers as compared to the industrial sector,” he said while talking to a news channel.

The minister said that efforts have been made to bring improvement in the gas field infrastructure and stressed the need for devising a strategy for exploration to “overcome the gas shortage on permanent basis”.

On the ongoing gas shortage in Sindh, he said the provincial government has “failed to provide a route for new gas pipeline” in the province that is why it is facing the gas shortfall.

The Sindh government has also declined the federal government’s offer to provide Liquefied Natural Gas to it, he added.

It is pertinent to mention that provinces have already turned down a proposal floated by the federal government that asks them to withdraw their first right of use over natural gas and give top priority to domestic consumers across the country.

Under Article 158 of the Constitution, gas-producing provinces like Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh have the first right of use over the natural resource found in their jurisdictions.

Moreover, Karachi’s industrialists on December 27 announced that they would stage a protest and sit-in outside the offices of the Sui Southern Gas Company against the gas shortage.