LAHORE: Installation of 1,470 Town Border Stations (TBS) in five major cities has greatly helped Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) to bring down its Unaccounted For Gas (UFG) losses (line losses) to 5.15 per cent which were 8.98pc four years before.

The TBS are used as a tool to trace gas pilferage, leakage in small localities, mohallas besides measuring quantity of gas available in pipelines and used by the consumers. In case of leakages, it helps field operation teams to identify such spots quickly and fix the fault within a short time.

The stations were installed under phase-1 of the TBS metering project launched a few years ago in five major cities of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhawa and Islamabad. It was revealed in a high-level meeting in Islamabad presided over by the Federal Minister Musadik Malik. Federal Secretary (Petroleum Division) Momin Ali Agha, SNGPL board’s directors and senior officers including managing director were also in attendance.

The meeting reviewed overall performance, particularly in respect of UFG control. The participants were told that collective efforts related to TBS installation project had helped company reduce its UFG losses substantially from 62,627 MMCF (8.98%) in FY2019-20 to 32,588 (5.15%) in FY2022-23.

The meeting was told efforts were on to reduce UFG further. “Since the data related to UFG losses in the 2023-24 is under auditing process these days, it will be shared after verifications by the auditors,” an officer privy to the meeting said.

“The company has been monitoring gas losses at micro level. It has completed installation of 1,470 TBSs /gas measurement facilities in five major cities--Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and Mardan under Phase-1 of TBS metering project. The meters on rest of the TBSs will be installed under Phase-2, for which spadework has also been completed,” the officer said.

Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2024