KARACHI, April 10: Apart from a rise in tariff and increased consumption of natural gas proportionate to the annual expansion of the customer base of the Sui Southern Gas Company, no extraneous factor is responsible for what have been described in the press as inflated gas bills.
This was the thrust of the press conference given by top- ranking SSGC officials at its headquarters on Thursday morning.
Senior General Manager M.H. Asif told newsmen that while gas billing was directly affected by gas tariff, determined by the federal government, and the quantity of natural gas consumed, it was also affected by the quality, quantity and maintenance of gas burning equipment in households. “Gas burning equipment normally used are burners or stoves and water heaters or geysers. The amount of gas consumed by these equipment depends on thermostat’s condition, state of insulation, geyser setting — whether on ‘warm’ or ‘hot’ or ‘very hot’ — yellow or blue flame and inefficient burning.”
Earlier, an SSGC official gave a demonstration showing that if a geyser is set on ‘very hot’ instead of ‘warm’, gas consumption increases twofold. He explained that gas consumption depended upon atmospheric temperature and the length of gas pipes.
Newsmen were also taken to the billing department where SSGC officials showed how the gas company had automated the process of meter reading, thus reducing the chances of human error almost completely.
Mr Asif spoke at length about gas tariff slabs. He said the first slab ranged from zero to 100 cubic metres of natural gas, the second slab from 100 to 200 cubic metres of natural gas, the third slab from 200 to 300 cubic metres of natural gas and the fourth slab took care of consumption over 300 cubic meters of natural gas. “Tariff is formulated in such a way that when a consumer moves from the first slab to the second slab, he pays 50 per cent more, from the second slab to the third slab 61 per cent more and so on and so forth. When a person consumes more than 300 cubic meters of natural gas he pays more than 200 per cent of what he would have paid had he restricted his consumption to the first slab.”
Mr Asif pointed out that over a year four per cent of SSGC consumers — which translated to 35,000 consumers or thereabouts — moved into the fourth slab because of increased consumption of natural gas. However, he insisted that the increased consumption of natural gas had nothing to do with the change in the billing mechanism of the gas utility.
The senior general manager said it was believed that winter this year had been more sustained than those of previous years. He added that the intensity of winter was not determined by the minimum temperature on a given day but by average temperature.
He said that Pakistan was one of the few countries in the world where tariff for industrial consumers was higher than the tariff for domestic consumers. He added that in most advanced countries industrial consumers paid less than domestic consumers.
The deputy managing director of the SSGC, Inam-us-Samad, also attended the press conference.
