The All Pakistan CNG Association (APCNGA) on Tuesday said the former and the caretaker governments ignored its recommendations which would have reduced electricity load shedding by seventy percent and cut the gas bill of domestic users by fifty percent.
Approval of the APCNGA’s Energy Relief Plan containing mid-term and short-term strategies would have resulted in non-stop operations of all industrial and CNG stations, it said.
Speaking at a press conference APCNGA Chairman Supreme Council Ghiyas Abdullah Paracha said the caretaker setup did not take any interest in resolving the problem, rather they became part of the problem. Unveiling the details of the Energy Relief Plan, he said they had suggested uniform gas tariff for all sectors, ban on gas-powered generators and disconnecting gas supply to primitive captive power plants. These steps could have saved 550 mmcfd of natural gas while utilising half of the volume for power generation and would have resulted in an output of 1100 MW while rest of the gas could have been channelled to CNG filling stations and industry in Punjab, he claimed.
Accepting the proposals would have sparked the economy to contain unemployment and help government raise additional revenue worth billions, he added. Paracha said we had also suggested short-term measures like improving efficiency of machines, free of cost replacement of geysers to save 300 mmcfd of gas to be supplied to efficient power plants. He further said APCNGA’s long-term plan included bring to an end the rampant theft, tapping new gas reserves, better utilisation and just distribution of existing hydrocarbon resources, and importing LNG through funds raised by rationalisation of gas tariff. He said the top government authorities continued to misguide masses on the issue of CNG on the behest of influential lobbies while the CNG sector has been consuming only 6.1 percent of the total gas output.
CNG sector is using 256 mmcfd of gas, with Punjab using 129 mmcfd, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 63 mmcfd, while Sindh and Balochistan are consuming 64 mmcfd, he said adding that suspending gas supply to CNG outlets in Punjab will save enough gas to generate 500 MW of electricity while the shortfall was a mammoth 7000 MW. Paracha said closure of CNG will hut millions including domestic consumers as CNG sector has been providing subsidy to all other gas consuming sectors. Four hundred thousand people directly related to the Rs 400 billion CNG industry and 3.5 million owners of converted vehicles would also suffer while petrol consumption will jump by 230 million litres per month putting extra strain on foreign reserves, he added.
