State Minister for Petroleum Jam Kemal Khan on Monday told the National Assembly that 120 people have been apprehended from across the country for gas theft.
To a question during question hour, he said total gas pilferage in the country was 3.89MMCFD. He said a strict vigilance of the compressed natural gas (CNG) was being ensured.
He said that 544 cases of gas theft had been registered before June 30 this year and 310 since June 30. He said that there was a shortage of gas in the country due to increase in demand. The gas supply to the CNG sector has been curtailed through load management and various options were being explored to overcome the gas shortage, he added.
He said the government had not yet decided to increase the gas price. There are a total of 3,518 CNG stations in the country, he added.
Regarding the Pak-Iran gas pipeline project, he said it was planned to supply 750 million cubic feet gas daily to Pakistan from Iran. The project is being implemented on a segmented approach whereby each country would be responsible for the construction of pipeline in the respective territory, he added.
“Both the sides have agreed to enhance the contractual volume of 750MMVFT per day to 1000MMCFT per day with a mutual consent,” he said, adding that the first gas flow was targeted by December 2014.
He said the government was committed to complete the project as per schedule. Currently the project is in implementation phase. Iran has been requested to speed up the submission of techno-commercial proposal and possibility of enhancing supplier credit facility, he added.
He said the funds collected through gas infrastructure development cess would be utilised for the same coupled with $500 million financing provided by Iran.
To a question, he said as per agreement penalty worth $3 million per day would be levied on the side backtracking from the project.
Separately, State Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab said as many as 793 kilometres of roads had been destroyed partially or completely by floods.
Answering a question of Aisha Syed, the minister said a total of 46 bridges had also been damaged in 2010 floods.
“The expenditures worth Rs 1169.048 million have been incurred on repairing the damaged roads. Out of this amount, Rs 32.197 million have been incurred in Punjab; Rs 361.202 million incurred in Sindh; Rs 346.165 million in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; Rs 429.484 million were incurred in Azad Jammu and Kashmir to repair the damages of 2010 floods,” he added.
He said that the government has provided 7,017,097 gas connections, including 183,810 connections in Bahawalpur, 408,563 in Multan, 490,782 in Faisalabad, 145,359 in Sargodha, 135,186 in Sahiwal, 894,759 in Lahore, 171,629 in Sheikhupura, 679,427 in Gujranwala/Gujrat, 788, 678 in Islamabad/Rawalpindi, 435,203 in Peshawar, 126,729 in Abbottabad, 1,645,558 in Karachi, 679,333 in interior Sindh, 230,998 in Balochistan and 652 connections have been provided to Gwadar residents since June 2013.
