LAHORE: Gas supply to several areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab will be restored today (Friday) after the SNGPL’s field engineering staff finally succeeded in repairing the 16-inch diameter gas pipeline on Thursday.

Many areas including Karak, Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Tank, Dera Ismail Khan and Bhakkar districts had been facing gas supply suspension for the last couple of days after residents of Peer Mela area in Karak damaged a transmission pipeline in protest on Tuesday morning.

Though a team of the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited had arrived in the area to repair the pipeline, the locals disallowed it to do so till acceptance of their demands. However, SNGPL Managing Director Amjad Latif said the demands were unlawful.

“The officials started repair work after a local jirga intervened and succeeded in making the locals allow the repair work,” Mr Latif told Dawn on Thursday. “Now the repair work has been completed but we cannot make the pipeline operational in night hours due to some technical issues. Therefore, we will make the line operational on Friday and restore gas to all the affected areas,” he said.

According to Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, the jirga helped the SNGPL team carry out the repair work that was completed on Thursday evening.

Published in Dawn, March 24th, 2017