Gas crisis may lead to an unsolvable quandary: official

KARACHI: Gas prices in Pakistan may lead to an unsolvable quandary if the government did not address this issue on time, an official of the Employers Federation of Pakistan (EFP) said on Tuesday.

EFP president Ismail Suttar in a statement said that the government has always favoured the average domestic majority over the industrial minority with regard to gas consumption.

He blasted the government, saying that it has stimulated domestic consumption by providing everyday consumers with plentiful ease in exploiting the resource, and by unreasonable amounts of subsidies, which has increased the load on industrial entities.

Suttar said: “A simple global analysis can bring further clarity to the matter that it is nowhere in the world [and] that such an infrastructure for gas distribution exists. Many countries, since their beginning, have not facilitated the domestic sector with such a luxurious gas pipeline-based infrastructure and have relied either on LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) or on RLNG (regasified liquefied natural gas) cylinders.”

Despite the impending crisis, official sources claim the problem will continue to escalate in the future, if no action is taken in due course of time.

Even in more recent times, the shortcomings in production and the high rising demands for the winter season has led Pakistan to buy gas supplies from Qatar at high prices.

Suttar also said that Federal Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar has initially claimed that the gas supply will be ensured for the domestic consumers during breakfast, lunch, and dinner hours only, amid the major gas shortfall in the country during the winter season.

The EFP president emphasised that the solution lies in the core of the problem itself, most importantly the government should reconsider their benchmark of subsidies and gas prices to the average domestic consumers, which are taking the natural deposit for granted.

He said: “A simple deliberation on the matter can lead us to realise that the conventional system of gas pipelines is failing and if no action is taken in due course of time, Pakistan would be facing the gas crisis head-on.”