By Sajjad Ali
ISLAMABAD: The Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) has requested OGRA for the grant of an additional quota of 300,000 new connections to move towards clearing its backlog which touched the figure of 2.7 million applications due to ever-increasing demand of the commodity and certain capacity issues.
“For the current fiscal year, the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) had granted the permission for around 400,000 connections, which was extremely insufficient against 2.7 million pending applications on the SNGPL s network,” a senior official privy to petroleum sector developments told APP.
He said the company had requested the authority to allow 300,000 more connections for the year, adding “OGRA has verbally accepted our request and formal approval in that regard will be granted soon.” Overall, the two-state companies, the SNGPL and Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC), were allowed to provide around 549,821 new connections to domestic, commercial and industrial consumers during the current fiscal year across the country.
According to an official data, the SNGPL was permitted to add 405,450 new consumers in its network including 400,000 domestic, 5,000 commercial and 450 industrial, while SSGC was allowed to give 144,371 connections including 143,023 domestic, 1,164 commercial and 184 industrial during the year 2020-21.
During the last year, the companies had awarded 430,145 connections of different nature, slightly exceeding the target of 425,548, out of which SNGPL provided 300,000 domestic connections, 5,000 commercial and 450 industrial, making 100 per cent achievement against the target of 305,450.
Whereas, the SSGC gave 123,900 domestic connections, 700 commercial and 95 industrial, exceeding 3 per cent against the overall target of 120,098.
Besides, the two companies had laid 5,005 kilometres (KMs) additional supply and distribution lines in their respective areas to reinforce their transmission network across the country. Out of which, the SNGPL laid 4,155 kilometres and SSGC 850 kilometres.
For the current fiscal year, the SNGPL has set the target to lay 6,965 kilometres transmission and distribution lines, while SSGC would expand its network by 1,418 kilometres.
The country has an extensive network of over 12,971 kilometres transmission, 139,827 kilometres distribution and 37,058 kilometres services gas pipelines to provide the commodity to more than 9.6 million consumers across the country. Pakistan s indigenous gas production is around 3.7 billion Cubic Feet per Day (BCFD) against the demand of 6 BCFD, while the existing reserves are depleting at the rate of 9.5 per cent annually and unfortunately, oil and gas Exploration & Production companies made no significant discovery since long.
Realizing the present and future needs of gas, the government is encouraging private sector players in the LNG business under its ease-of-doing-business plan to meet the increasing demand of the gas.
The strategy has started yielding good results as two multinational companies are planning to start physical work on setting up their LNG terminals during next few months, while another local company is flexing muscles to start the import of the commodity at the earliest.
For increasing the domestic production and achieving self-sufficiency in the energy sector, the incumbent government has so far awarded around 10 new oil and gas exploration blocks, while it was in the process of granting 27 more in phases
