Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) has extended gas curtailment for compressed natural gas (CNG) stations of Punjab by 12 hours to spare the fuel for fertiliser and other industries.
Earlier, the CNG filling stations were scheduled to be closed for 64 hours in a week.
SNGPL Managing Director Arif Hameed told The Express Tribune that now the company would give preference to fertiliser and other industries, which suffered a lot in the recent winter season.
“Fertiliser plants were totally closed for the whole winter, but now we have started providing gas to two plants – Engro Fertiliser and Pak-Arab Fertiliser – along with industries of Punjab,” he said. “We have been instructed by the government to give priority to fertiliser and other industries.”
The industries of the province will now get gas for three days a week compared to two days earlier. Hameed defended the increase in gas curtailment for CNG stations, saying it would not affect people much as the increased outages would start late in the night.
For months, fertiliser companies and industrial giants had been pressing the SNGPL and the government for gas supply, saying industries were more important than CNG stations and residential consumers.
Hameed expected gas supply to improve in a couple of weeks with improvement in temperature in northern areas, where the weather was still cold. After that, he said, “we will provide gas to two more fertiliser plants which will enable them to resume operations. We will also adjust each sector according to the gas availability.”
Meanwhile, in response to increased outages, CNG dealers called a meeting of its central executive committee in Islamabad on Monday to discuss the issue.
Talking to The Express Tribune, All Pakistan CNG Association Punjab Chapter President Captain (Retd) Shuja Anwar said the CNG industry was expecting a reduction in gas curtailment from March due to change in weather, but was gifted with an increase in outages.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 4th, 2012.
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@Cautious:
we need to make decisions that are based on best economic use of our resources, especially when resources are scare and poverty high. countless independent studies have shown that natural gas used for the manufacture of fertilizers is the best economic use of gas. please see the report by the planning commission, asian development bank that also supports this view (based on highest value added per mmbtu of energy). let us not confuse profit of industries with economic value. our current economic despair is a result of decades of socially driven, short sighted and inconsistent policies. we have two options, either make socially popular decisions that would mean low economic development and persistent crises or economically advantages decisions which will benefit the economy as a whole but lead to record profits for some and ruin for others. you cant have both. sorry to burst your bubble...
Your fertilizer producers have made record profits despite being shut down which is a clear sign that they have been price gouging - doesn't sound like a group worth of special attention to me. Why not use the gas to keep people warm and import fertilizer which is readily available on the international market?