LAHORE, Jan 25: Friday remained the worst day so far for the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited, with the demand burgeoning to 2,550 million cubic feet (mcf) against the supply of 1,860mcf — a deficit of nearly 700mcf.

According to company officials, the compressed natural gas (CNG) stations could be the next casualty if the situation does not improve in the next 24 hours. “There has been a daily increase of around 25mcf in demand for the last four days, with the cold wave gripping the entire country,” said a company official.

Substantiating his claim, he said the city load — excluding the major industry — which was 1,610mcf on Wednesday, had increased to 1,637mcf on Thursday. The Friday statistics would be available on Saturday (today) morning, but they were not expected to be any different from the previous day.

The company had already closed down the entire industry on its system, with the only exception of 20 per cent supply to textile industry for processing alone, he said and added: “On Friday, it had to borrow 40mcf from the Sui Southern Gas Pipelines Limited to ensure partial supply to the power sector because it could not spare gas from its own system.”

Normally, the company had over 300mcf in its pack (distribution pipelines) and even it had depleted in the last three days, revealed another official.

Talking about the effects of conservation campaign, he said it hardly made sense in such a freezing weather. The company was still trying to keep the momentum up, but it was doing so with full knowledge of futility of the drive. “Conservation measures are effective only when people tend to waste gas. With the current rates and freezing cold in most part of the country, one could hardly expect people to switch off heaters and geysers”, he said.

Meanwhile, the city dwellers suffered distribution problems in addition to overall shortage of the gas. With mercury dropping to subzero in most parts of the country, condensation (gas conversion into liquid) phenomenon hit the pipelines like never before. People from all over the city kept calling newspaper offices to register their complaints as the company staff failed to take care of most of such problems.

A company official admitted to multiplying distribution problems and also expressed inability of the company to deal with the “natural phenomenon which is beyond anyone’s control”.

The worst-hit consumers were the ones whose residences fell in the middle of and beyond the supply points. With increasing deficit and low-pressure supplies, only those fortunate ones got better supply who lived closer to the main supply points in the cities.

The company denied suspending supplies to the CNG stations “so far” in Punjab and the NWFP. There were some pressure problems which were being managed as far as possible by the regional managers, it said.

—Ahmad Fraz Khan