Twin energy crisis to take heavy toll on economy

LAHORE: The avoidable twin energy crisis is set to wreak havoc on economy as gas and power blackouts will bring business, commercial, and manufacturing activities to a standstill, The News learnt on Monday.

The messed-up energy crisis means no gas for productive sectors of the economy like, industry and transport.

Both Sui companies have further tightened gas availability in view of shrinking supplies. Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Ltd (SNGPL) under its load management plan for the period of June 29 to July 05, 2021 announced on Monday to suspend gas/Regasified Liquefied Natural Gas (RLNG) supply to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) sector, cement industry and non-export industrial sector across the franchised area of gas utility including Punjab & Khyber Pakhtunkha. Besides, RLNG supply to both Punjab-based fertiliser units would be stopped from midnight of June 29, 2021 till midnight of July 05, 2021.

Consumers of Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) have been facing hardship for the last about a couple of weeks and the situation is feared to be further aggravated as far as availability of natural gas is concerned.

Power sector is also feeling the heat of fuel shortage, facing serious issues on generation sides. According to sources, power generation would be curtailed by 5000MW to 7000MW in the next week or so. Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO) announced Load Management Programme with up to seven hours of outages in the five districts of the central Punjab. Moreover, there will be a four-hour consecutive power cut next whole week for the steel furnace industry.

Sources said policymaking failure to handle energy supply side led to prolonged closure of key import terminal coupled with suspension of major gas well during peak demand and in the absence of key hydropower due to low inflows.

They claimed the intensity of gas shortage could have been lessened had the authorities been able to bring filled floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) during closure for dry docking after making advance preparation with a more prudent approach. By doing so, they could have reduced the duration of gas outage from the terminal by about one-third, officials said.

Firstly, energy managers should have planned bringing filled FSRU with Qatar and SSGC following doing requisite paperwork so that all issues were handled upfront. The same was done in 2015 at the launch of 1st terminal and done in a record time. A filled FSRU would dock straight without wasting any time or waiting for the LNG supplies. With the present arrangements, there will be unhooking of outgoing Exquisite unit and then hooking of incoming Sequoia. Transfer testing was expected till June 4, providing some gas to the system and full load was expected to pour in by 5th, the official said.

He regretted there was an army of ministers, special assistants, high-ups, and other authorities to run the energy affairs of the country, but they all seem to be sleeping on the job. Lack of planning as well as a proactive approach is also aggravating gas shortage in the country. No one is willing to go for out-of-the-box solutions, taking innovative approach to deal with such an alarming situation, the officials lamented.

With the objective to minimise downtime, all stakeholders could have worked efficiently by employing a reasonable approach without making so much noise. With such a good governance approach, the critical low gas pack situation could have been reduced to barely 36 to 48 hours instead of 72 hours, sources claimed.

The Ministry of Energy representative was not unavailable to comment on managing closure of terminal with more efficient approach by arranging filled-FSRU for docking in order to reduce precious time in resumption of RLNG supplies to system pack.