January 25, 2003	Saturday	Ziqa’ad 21, 1423

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LAHORE, Jan 24: The Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) claimed to have repaired one of the lines and restored partial supplies by 2am on Friday.

Addressing a press conference, Mr Rashid Lone, Managing Director of the SNGPL, said that the company had commissioned the line at 7.30pm on Thursday evening.

When the line packing (filling) process was completed by 2am, the SNGPL began transmitting 400 million cubic feet — around 40 per cent of the recent damage — of gas into the system.

The MD claimed the company had already restored supply to all of its 40,000 commercial consumers and restored pressure for 2.1 million domestic consumers. It would restore supply to compressed natural gas (CNG) stations on Saturday (today) and start supply to 1,100 industrial units by Monday evening or Tuesday morning.

He completely denied any blast or fire incident following the commissioning of the line as reported by a section of the press on Friday. Contrary to the press reports, he said, supply of gas was restored as planned and there was absolutely no delay in it.

He said at present 925 million cubic feet of gas was available in its system against the total demand of 1100mcf. Around 400mcf was being pumped into the system by the newly-commissioned line near Bhong.

Another 390mcf was coming from Qadirpur field and 41mcf from the Dohdak field. Another 90mcf of gas was being injected from 14 gasfields from Potohar belt. “This supply is sufficient to meet the entire load requirements of domestic and commercial consumers,” he said.

With the commissioning of second line on Friday (yesterday), the company would be able to inject an additional 200mcf of gas from the Sui field, thus restoring the full pre-blast supplies.