ISLAMABAD, Sept 19: Pakistan is facing difficulties in deciding whether to import gas from Qatar, Iran or Turkmenistan because of the non-availability of basic data.

Discussion on the laying of the three gas pipelines have been going on among Pakistan, Iran, Qatar, Turkmenistan, India, Afghanistan and the Asian Development Bank since 1990.

It is learnt that Pakistan will face a shortfall in gas of about 1,000 million million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) by 2007- 08. Officials expressed their skepticism about the three projects and said financial calculations and topographical details of either of the pipelines routes were not available.

They told Dawn that only the Qatar gas pipeline consortium had provided certain estimates about the Gulf-South Asia pipeline project but qualified those as being conceptual as no deep sea survey had been carried out. So far as the other two options were concerned even conceptual data was not available, they said.

Officials, however, agreed that the power sector would be the major user of the gas in the years to come and its gas demand would play a crucial role in determining and firming up the future gas demand, adding that it would affect the designing of the gas import projects.

Future gas demand forecasts by the Planning Commission, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources, Private Power and Infrastructure Board and Interstate Gas Company Limited differed with each other, indicating their uncertainty about gas demand in the coming years.

Sources quoted petroleum secretary Ahmad Waqar expressing his concern at a recent meeting that the "ministry has so far not been able to identify the most suitable source of gas supply out of the three available options".

These sources said the draft gas sales agreement provided by the Crescent Petroleum of Sharjah on Qatar pipeline could not be processed further as the government of Qatar had not provided information about the block or the area earmarked and quantity of gas available for export to Pakistan.

Accordingly, the Interstate Gas Company has been asked to obtain necessary data from the Crescent Petroleum and look into the issues like security of the pipeline through deep sea as well as status and the credibility of Crescent Petroleum.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is contacting the Qatar government through informal sources if it would back the agreement agree to guarantee the agreement with Crescent Petroleum in this project.

The government is also unclear as yet about the integration of the local network with the gas pipelines. The officials said all the three projects would have different terminal points. Till a uniform terminal point is not decided, any study on gas pipelines could not be based on factual data.

The government in consultation with the ADB is hiring consultants to re-draft a host government agreement according to the requirement of the Pakistani laws in the light of a draft agreement provided by ADB to undertake the TAP gas pipeline project.