Pakistan struggles to meet domestic and industrial gas consumption needs

Pakistan struggles to meet its domestic and industrial gas consumption needs as its supplies are stretched between its domestic household consumption during the winter and the industrial needs to be distributed among its provinces.

Pakistan's Sindh province produces 70 per cent of the natural gas of Pakistan. However, in the third week of June this year, the Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) stopped gas supply to industries in Karachi for an indefinite period, which gave rise to panic in the sector, according to News International.

The Pakistan Peoples' Party Government, back in 2008, had inherited a considerably worse gas shortfall that it overcame through the confidence of the Parliament namely, the Gas Infrastructure Development Cess (GIDC) Act 2011, according to News International.

It's been a decade since the transformation of the GIDC Act 2011 to the GIDC Act 2015 which stipulates that collected cess would be used by the federal government only on Iran-Pakistan (IP), Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline projects, LNG or other ancillary projects.

The estimated cost for the IP gas pipeline was stated to be 271 billion, TAPI 31 billion, North South gas pipeline 20 billion and the underground gas storage project at 75 billion. According to figures provided by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government to the Supreme Court, Rs 2.95 million was collected in lieu of cess till June 30, 2019. In July 2020, the collected cess amounted to Rs307 billion, according to News International.

Surprisingly, there has been no mention of the GIDC projects in the Pakistan Economic Survey since 2015.

Earlier, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz Government had plugged the shortfall by importing LNG from Qatar, according to News International.

Further, the PTI Government admitted before the Supreme Court that it is following the same policy. Chapter 14 of the Pakistan Economy Survey 2019-2020 clearly has, "to meet the shortfall, the (PTI) government has initiated the import of LNG".

Only the implementation of the constitutional measures taken in 2011 can help Pakistan overcome the gas crisis, according to News International.

( With inputs from ANI )

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