THIS is a apropos news report (July 21), referring to a statement by Mr Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources, that construction work had started on a 700km-long pipeline to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) from China.

If the minister has not been misquoted, this is a surprising statement. LNG cannot be pipelined. Natural gas liquefaction is commercially done through refrigeration at -162 degree Celcius, and not by compressing as this requires very high pressure and handling. Besides, storage equipment becomes massive and prohibitively expensive.

LNG is shipped worldwide through road or shipping tankers in refrigerated condition at a slightly above atmospheric pressure, about four psi. Pipelining of a refrigerated gas over long distances is therefore not practicable and has never been done so far.

Surely, the ministry of petroleum has knowledgeable technical people sitting there who must have reviewed the statement before advising the minister. How it got past them all and the minister ended up giving it to the Voice of America, and that too stating that the work on 700km-long project had actually started needs to be checked out and explained.

Would the petroleum and natural resources ministry throw some light on this doubtful press report, or on some astonishing technical breakthrough which they have recently achieved to do so.

Further, as reports go, China itself is short on natural gas and is importing LNG, having imported nearly 58 billion CM last year. You may recall China was and perhaps still is interested in importing Iranian gas through the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline agreement currently under expected revival. So exporting gas by China seems quite unlikely.

Engr Khalid Javed

Lahore

Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2015

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