The Cabinet Committee on Energy (CCoE), in its meeting in Islamabad on Wednesday, was informed that the country faced a heavy shortfall of gas last month due to an upsurge in consumption in the ongoing winter season.

This consumption is almost double compared to the summer in the domestic sector, which prefers to use heavily-subsidised gas compared to other energy sources, officials of the energy ministry said, while adding that a shortage of 270mmcfd of gas was witnessed last month.

The cabinet committee meeting, chaired by Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, was further informed that due to lack of gas exploration during the last 10 years, the production of gas had declined by 7 per cent whereas demand has been rising by 5pc annually.

The committee sought a detailed plan from the energy ministry to overcome the shortage of energy and improve gas supplies throughout the year.

The CCoE was informed that efforts to add 70mmcfd in the SSGC system and take LNG supplies for SNGPL up to 1300mmcfd had already started but its implementation was hampered by the grant of ‘Right of Ways’ from the Sindh government, which had granted only one so far and two more were still awaited since last summer. With these measures, nearly 70mmcfd gas is likely to be added to the SSGC by end January.

The committee was told that in view of 2020-21 projections, which show a shortfall of 477mmcfd, the government had decided to build additional terminals and five new private terminals had been awarded in November 2019, while process for a dedicated pipeline of 1.2 BCFD+ required to carry imported LNG from these terminals to north, would also begin soon.

The cabinet committee noted that there was a need to work on contingency plans for 2020-21 to overcome the gas shortage and improve its supplies by using energy produced through gas and electricity as a whole to provide more options to energy consumers and make the system more efficient.

It asked the ministry of energy to brief it in the next meeting on the current situation in the power sector so that the issues and problems in both the gas and power sectors could be properly analysed and contextualised uniformly to come up with realistic and more efficient solutions to bridge the gap between the demand and supply in the energy sector.