Goods news regarding off-shore drilling expected this month: Minister for petroleum

March 8, 2019: Minister for Petroleum Ghulam Sarwar Khan on Friday told Senate that there was no gas load shedding in domestic and commercial sectors, however demand and supply gap was being observed during the winter season at peak hours within the areas falling at the tail end of the distribution network.

Speaking at the floor of the upper house, he said there were constraints in the system and at the tail ends gas was not reaching in certain areas.

Gas supply was also affected due to losses in the system, he said adding most of theft and leakage of gas was occurring in two provinces Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.

He said the reason for pressure drop was due to leakages but steps had been taken to rectify the situation by upgrading pipelines.

He said population was scattered in Balochistan and in order to provide gas to people, new projects were being undertaken.

In the past, new reservoirs were not discovered while the present gas reserves were depleting. “We are working on war footing, 10 new blocks would be explored while a world known company Exxon Mobil was drilling offshore and good news was expected in March,” he added.

He said top priority was to provide gas to industries which could lead to more exports.

The house was told that demand increased in winter but Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) had reported that at present, no gas load shedding was being carried out by SSGC in its franchise areas and uninterrupted gas supply was ensured to the domestic as well as commercial customers.

The company further reported that due to increase in demand of customers and depletion of gas reservoirs of different fields there was shortfall of around 300 Million Cubic Feet per day in the system which was met through gas load management in different sectors as per sectoral priority order approved by the Economic Coordination Committee.

Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited had reported that uninterrupted gas was being supplied to the highest priority domestic and commercial consumers. Gas consumption by high priority domestic sector increased manifold during winter on account of use of room and water heaters, resulting in widening of gas between demand and supply. In certain cases the consumers at the tail end of gas network may face low pressure.

The company further reported that recently supplies to various sectors had to be curtailed due to certain reasons including outage of Pakistan Gas Port Consortium Limited due to maintenance from December 28, 2018 to January 1, 2019, rupture of 36 diameter pipeline due to sabotage activity on January 9 and non-berthing of Pakistan State Oil LNG cargo on January 17 and 18. Currently uninterrupted and continuous RLNG was being supplied to power, fertilizer, industrial, captive power and CNG sector consumers in Punjab, he added.

The government was working on increasing LNG imports and the first flow on regasified LNG had been injected into SNGPL’s network on March 27, 2015. Presently 1100 MMCFD RLNG was being injected into SNGPL system.

Other measures include exploration of indigenous gas sources through allocation of new blocks and promotion of LNG air mix plants in remote and off grid areas, he added, he added.

(APP)