LAHORE, Jan 16: As the Mercury drops following snowfall in the northern parts of the country, textile and other millers from Sheikhupura and other areas in the Lahore region fear that the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) may stop gas supply to the industry.

“We have received a notice from the gas supplier that it plans to stop gas supply once again from Tuesday,” says Aptma-Punjab’s former senior vice-chairman Adil Mahmood told this reporter on Monday.

“If it is done, it will be extremely detrimental to the industry, especially the export-oriented units, and would be against the directions of the prime minister to ensure continuous gas supply to the export-oriented units,” he said.

He said the SNGPL officials had told the industrial units on the Sheikhupura-Faisalabad road that they had so far received no notification from the federal government barring the company from stopping supplies to the industrial units during extreme (cold) weather conditions.

He said the federal government had already approved the recommendation by a committee to ensure continuous gas supplies to the export-oriented industry to save the country any loss in the export earnings. He said the federal government should immediately issue the notification to this effect if it had not done so to prevent curtailment of gas to the industrial units.

A SNGPL spokesman, however, denied that the company had sent any such notice or planned to curtail gas supplies to the industry from Tuesday. He said the gas supply and demand situation and its pressure was monitored on a daily basis.

“The company will resort to curtailing gas supplies only if pressure drops due to imbalance in supply and demand. Since temperature in this part of the country is also falling owing to snowfall in the northern parts, some businessmen might have assumed that the company is going to resort to this extreme action. But let me tell you that the company has not made any such decision so far.”

It may be mentioned that the public utility has intermittently stopped supplies to the industry in the Lahore region during last month due to cold weather conditions, which upped the domestic demand for gas for heating purposes. Last time, the SNGPL stopped the supply of gas to 118 captive power plants (CPP) in the Lahore (Sheikhupura and Bhai Phero) and Gujranwala regions, forcing export-oriented industrial units, especially textile mills, to close down their operations.