Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik on Tuesday assured the public that the government will make utmost efforts to meet the demand for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) during winters.

His remarks come as LPG supply has been disrupted due to the closure of Iranian border crossings, resulting in gas cylinders being sold at twice the official rate in the open market. LPG is widely used for rickshaws, but also for cooking and other purposes by those not on the piped gas network.

Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, Malik said, “Seeing people’s distress and also knowing that from December and January, your winter will be at its peak, and at that time […] even if the most expensive fuel has to be purchased for the piped network, we will bring it in and try to meet demand through LNG (liquefied natural gas).”

The minister assured the public that the government will make its “utmost efforts” to ensure piped supply of domestic gas for the timings of three daily meals. Besides this, LPG will be needed for other needs and by those without piped connections, he noted.

Speaking on fuel prices, Malik recalled the latest reduction and noted that the international market has closed lower. “Even better news will come before us,” he said for today’s revision of petrol and diesel prices.

The minister observed that the country was facing “numerous challenges” regarding the availability of LPG.

He added that some individuals were trying to exploit the situation after the supply “dried up on our western border”, with consumers being offered LPG at Rs700-800 per kilogramme.

He further said that efforts were under way to build the country’s energy security architecture from scratch, regretting that no work had so far been done on fuel storages or refineries.

“Before the war, nobody ever paid attention to how Pakistan needs to work on its infrastructure and energy security,” he observed.

Recalling that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif chaired a meeting today on the matter, he added that the premier was personally spearheading efforts to “rebuild the entire system from scratch, called the energy security architecture”.

“The war may certainly have caught us in its crossfire from elsewhere, but regarding our capacity to deal with these challenges meant we had to set our own house in order, right? We neither worked on storages, nor on refineries, nor on the LPG chain,” Malik remarked.

More to follow