KARACHI, Nov 28: The unavailability of compressed natural gas has pushed up the demand for petrol and its sales are likely to cross the three million tons mark by end of this fiscal year compared to 2.7 million tons sale recorded in 2011-12.

Refinery officials also fear more imports of petrol as some refineries also go on annual shutdown coupled with rising load-shedding of natural gas in winter.

Consumers are already having a difficult time in getting CNG owing to the shut down of outlets either by pump owners or because of low pressure. Even at operational pumps, consumers have to wait for long hours to get fuel. While the private CNG outlets had been observing strike against their decline in profit margin, the state-owned PSO pumps are also closed down.The situation is further aggravated by the closure of CNG supplies for two or three days a week by Sui Southern Gas Company Limited (SSGCL).

However, on Wednesday the SSGCL has announced that after getting improvement in line pack position in its system, it has decided to restore gas supply to all CNG stations in Sindh from Thursday, 9am.

Total natural gas requirement in Sindh and Balochistan is 1,300 MMCFD while the availability in SSGC’s system is approximately 1,100 MMCFD. CNG stations in the two provinces consume approximately 90-95 MMCFD.

“Winter will be difficult as the shortfall in gas supply will rise by 30 per cent,” SSGCL MD Zuhair Ahmed Siddiqui said.

He said the company has been closing down gas supply to industries on Sundays, adding: “Many units are not cooperating with us.”

“Such shut down actually enables SSGC to maintain uninterrupted gas supply to its customers throughout next week. Gas crisis can be averted in case the industries will fully cooperate,” he added.

Sources said that during gas shut down held on last Sunday, SSGC surveillance teams strictly monitored the industrial units throughout Karachi for checking violations. Around 20 units were found using gas on Sunday and later their gas supply was suspended for another 48 hours.

Coming back to petrol, Pakistan had already imported 4,165,583 tons of petrol from December 2008 till October 2012 while local production ranged between 120,000-125,000 tons per month. Refineries are operating at 75-90 per cent throughput.

Rising import of power generating machines is also putting up pressure on petrol consumption as generator import swelled to $329 million tons in July-October 2012 as compared to $267 million in the same period of 2011.

Since the government has put a ban on import of CNG kits and cylinders in December 2011, two local car assemblers are rolling out only petrol version cars. However, overall car sales had remained in red during July-October 2012 by plummeting over 30 per cent as compared to same period in 2011. Much of the support to petrol sales is coming from sale of locally produced bikes.

An analyst at Top Line Securities Nauman Khan was of the view that October 2012 petrol sales were recorded at 265,000 tons as compared to 195,000 tons in the same month of 2011. The July-October 2012 petrol sales surged to one million tons from 910,000 tons in the corresponding period of 2011.

“I see at least 11-12 per cent growth in petrol sales in view of CNG crisis and rising power generator imports,” he said, adding that power generators consume 10-20 per cent of total petrol sales.