Deregulation of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) prices is a prudent and wise decision of the government which will help revive CNG industry, said Federation of Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) President Abdul Rauf Alam.
“The CNG business can become viable when the price difference with petrol is twenty per cent minimum,” he said this while talking to Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi here on Sunday.
He said the CNG was being sold in liters and kilograms across Pakistan which needed standardisation. Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said that the world has entered into a golden age of gas which has emerged as the most import fuel and Pakistan’s future was also linked to it.
Now gas was the cheapest source for the power generation overtaking hydel power therefore dozens of countries were converting their power plants on gas, he said.
Talking to FPCCI President Abdul Rauf Alam, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said that quick import of gas from Iran and Turkmenistan was not possible while local production has remained stagnant for the last fifteen years. “So we have decided to import gas.”
Shahid Khaqan said that the number of LNG terminals and re-gasification plants was being increased to tame energy crisis, adding that hydel power was costing three times more than gas-based power production under the current oil prices.
He said that only two countries Pakistan and Somalia were using RON 87 grade petrol while “we continue to import world’s dirtiest diesel but situation will change from January 2017 as well will start importing diesel of Euro 2 standard.” The minister said that Kuwait was a major oil producing country which was using imported LNG for production of electricity while Pakistan was producing 8000 MW of electricity from fuel.
