THIS is apropos of Amir Khan Khaskheli’s letter regarding the reasons and role of the minister of petroleum and natural resources (PNR) and his ministry in aggravating the energy crisis instead of resolving it (Aug 8).

The minister (now adviser) has been involved in the affairs of the ministry of PNR since 2008, but all his efforts have been directed towards two basic elements: a) import of LNG, and b) replacement of CNG with LPG.

I fully endorse Mr Khaskheli’s views, particularly about the effort of the minister to direct gas to the power sector. Since several decades, most of the power plants were run on furnace oil but for reasons, which everyone in this country is now aware of, agreements were executed with power producers to supply gas, thus creating an artificial shortage of gas in the country to allow import of LPG and to replace CNG.

LPG was introduced 52 years ago but still hardly 10,000 vehicles use LPG as automotive fuel compared to 3.5 million vehicles on CNG. Even since the installation of the first LPG station in Karachi in 2012, only 125 vehicles have been converted on LPG in six months and the daily turnaround at the LPG station is hardly three to four vehicles.

How will the minister promote LPG whose price between each summer and winter varies grossly?

Instead of making efforts to appoint a qualified permanent managing director for OGDC, the minister (now adviser) was intent on keeping temporary non-technical assignees at the all-important position.

Had the OGDC been looked after well during the past four-and-a-half years of the government, the five producing gasfields in Sindh could have been developed and would have yielded almost close to one bcf gas equivalent to the gas being sought from the Iran pipeline or TAPI.

We have gas available in the country but there is nobody to develop it and we are all prepared to import gas at thrice the local gas cost.

GHULAM AHMAD YAZDANIKarachi