Gas, electricity situation returning to normal soon

Federal Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar has said that the situation in the gas and electricity sector will return to normal by Monday.

He said that the Pak-Russia gas pipeline is a big project of Rs 500 billion. There were some flaws in the project.

He said that Pakistan and Russia had signed an amended intergovernmental agreement and trying to execute this project.

Addressing a press conference here on Friday, Energy Minister Hammad Azhar said that the LNG terminal had to be repaired. This repair is necessary twice in 15 years, he said adding that, 40% of the LNG terminal has come into the LNG system.

He said that the government had targeted to restore 100 percent LNG supply,” he said, adding that the situation in the gas and power sector would return to normal by Monday.

The Tarbela dam is producing 25 percent out of total generation capacity. “Yes, we hope that in a few days the flow of water will increase in a few days and Tarbela will also start generating 75% of its capacity.

Although the government has met the shortfall of 630 MMCFD by local gas, power plants run on furnace oil every summer, he said adding that at present, we are running one-fourth of the power plants on furnace oil compared to the PML-N era and are gradually reducing it further.

At present, the consumption of electricity by domestic consumers has increased by 6 to 7 percent. ” We’ve increased the capacity of the power transmission system by 4,000 megawatts, which is a good thing,” he said, adding that most of what the previous governments left behind was relying on imported fuel.

“We have also reduced the circular debt. When we took over the government, the circular debt was increasing by Rs 450 billion annually. Now the circular debt has increased by Rs 177 billion and will go down further,” he said.

He added that government will add another 26,000 MW to the power system in the next eight years. Hopefully, work on this North-South gas pipeline project will start soon, said Hammad Azharn replying to a question.

Instead of agreements on take and pay, quarterly adjustments have been made in September instead of March to reduce the burden on consumers. I hope Tarbela will start improving power generation from Tarbela from next week, he said.