After several months of forced closure due to gas curtailment in 2011 and first two months of 2012, gas supply to fertiliser plants on SNGPL network was restored on Saturday, excluding Dawood Hercules Fertilisers Limited situated at Sheikhpura, whose gas supply remained suspended. The Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) based plants that include Pakarab, Engro Enven, Agritech and Dawood Hercules Fertilisers, with an accumulative urea production capacity of 2.2 million tonnes have been facing huge gas curtailments throughout 2011 and since the beginning of 2012. Besides the 62 days of shutdown during 2012 to date, Dawood Hercules Fertilisers was shut down for 192 days, Engro Enven for 190 days, Agritech for 173 days and Pakarab for 144 days during 2011. In the absence of gas supply which is a raw material the fertilisers industry could only produce 4.9 million tonnes of urea against an installed capacity of 6.9 million tonnes in 2011.
This record shortfall in the production of urea forced the government to spend nearly $800 million in precious foreign exchange for import of costly urea and further Rs54 billon as subsidy on imported urea to keep it at the price of locally produced urea. While welcoming the government’s decision to resume supply of gas to Pakarab, Agritech and Engro Enven plants, the CEO Dawood Hercules Fertiliser, Rashid Lone regretted that DH Fertilisers are facing discriminatory treatment in the matter of supply of gas. He pointed out that DH Fertilisers remains the only fertiliser factory on the SNGPL network to which gas supply has not been restored.