Gas, electricity woes to worsen

Consumers will have to face gas shortfall of over 20 per cent in the upcoming winter season.

ISLAMABAD: Consumers will face a gas shortfall of over 20 per cent in the upcoming winter season, which may result in closure of CNG stations and industries on a rotating basis. This will add to the woes of consumers who are already facing regular power outages.

The government has calculated a gas shortage of 1.1 billion cubic feet for winters. The ministry for petroleum has estimated that total gas production during the winters will be around 4.1 billion cubic feet per day against projected demand of 5.2 billion cubic feet.

The expected shortage is even more than last year’s when the shortfall was less than a billion cubic feet. That shortage had resulted in the forced closure of CNG stations for two days a week and a day without gas for the industry.

“The increase in (gas) demand is mainly due to the addition of five new power plants with a gas requirement of 202 million cubic feet per day and one new fertiliser plant with a requirement of 100 million cubic feet per day,” said the ministry for petroleum.

The ministry of water and power reported an electricity shortfall of 2,910 megawatts (MW) that has resulted in power outages for hours. In this moderate weather, the outages are attributed to mismanagement.

The government has remained unable to explore new gas fields due to administrative, security and financial constraints. In the words of Farooq Rahmatullah, the chairman of the Oil and Gas Development Company, two-thirds of the country has not been surveyed due to the law and order situation, hindering the exploration of vast reservoirs of gas that could be utilised for power generation.

The Thar desert contains the world’s seventh largest coal reserves. These reserves have been estimated at 175 billion tons of coal, equivalent to 50 billion tons of oil and sufficient to generate 100,000MW of electricity for over 200 years.

The government had decided in principle that all contractual commitments of generation plants will be met. It had also taken the decision that, wherever possible, industrial consumers will be encouraged to use alternate fuels.

Minister for Petroleum Syed Naveed Qamar has asked government functionaries to chalk out a coordinated winter gas load management programme that will be tabled in the upcoming meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee for final approval.

The committee will also take a final decision on whether to protect domestic and commercial consumers from gas outages or divide the outages amongst all consumers.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 13^th, 2010.