KARACHI, Feb 9: The billing department of the Sui Southern Gas Company has been inundated with complaints of excess billing.

Well-placed sources told Dawn that the gas company was still trying to figure out what error had caused inflated bills to be issued. They added that it was widely believed that a computer error was responsible for the inflated bills.

Dawn contacted the spokesman of the gas company but he did not give any answer. He said that another spokesman would tell Dawn about the reports of inflated bills issued by the SSGC. However, the other spokesman did not contact this newspaper.

SSGC officials argue that in winter gas bills almost always go up. But they also admit that the rise in gas bills is not proportional to the fall in the temperature this year.

The sources told Dawn that the previous year the SSGC had earned an additional Rs20 million or thereabouts every month owing to the implementation of a change in the billing mechanism.

They added that the SSGC had earned the extra sum because it had sold natural gas based on its heating value and not on its volume.

They said the SSGC had sold 258 million cubic metres of natural gas in January 2002. In terms of its heating value, the gas company had sold 8.96 million British Thermal Unit natural gas in January.

“If the gas company had sold this amount of gas in terms of volume — as it used to up until Dec 2001 — it would have earned Rs1.29 billion. Due to the change in the billing mechanism enforced by the government effective from Jan 1 the SSGC earned Rs1.31 billion.”

The SSGC officials insisted that the nearly two per cent rise in revenue was not fixed. “The two per cent rise in SSGC revenue was a result of the mixing of natural gas from different gas fields. It is two per cent this month. It could be one per cent next month. It will vary from season to season, condition to condition and requirement to requirement.”

They added that those consumers the heating value of whose gas supply was more than 950 British Thermal Units would pay more than what they had been paying previously. By the same token, those consumers the heating value of whose gas supply was less than 950 British Thermal Units would pay less than they had been paying previously.

Insiders told Dawn that gas bills in the Bin Qasim had risen by seven per cent, in the Pakistan Steel Mills area by over nine per cent, in Federal B. Area by 0.7 per cent (almost unchanged) and the West Wharf area (which included SITE) by 0.3 per cent (also unchanged). They added that gas bills in the Hub area had decreased by 2.5 per cent and in Korangi and Landhi by one per cent.

The SSGC officials explained that since March 2000 the company had been receiving gas from the Zamzama field whose heating value — which was also referred to as calorific value in technical parlance — was less than the heating value of gas from the Sui field. As a result, the average heating value of the gas mix had lowered, eliciting squeals of protest from consumers, especially the industrial ones, who complained that their monthly bills had gone up.