Amid a deepening natural gas crisis in the country, the government has come up with a novel idea to improve natural gas supply to domestic consumers during the current winter season by suspending gas supply to the compressed natural gas (CNG) stations for a month.
The decision has become a typical example of a zero sum game, because it has done little to improve the gas supply to domestic consumers, but dealt a heavy blow to daily wage earners and the transport sector, which has already been reeling from the high prices of petroleum products in the country.
To make up for the gas shortage to domestic consumers, the state-owned Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) has announced to completely suspend gas supply to the CNG stations both in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. As the decision went into effect, CNG station owners and employees, local transport workers, rickshaw drivers, small time industry, daily wage earners and commuters have spoken against the arrangement, which, they say, have badly affected their income and increased their expenses to an unbearable level.
Although the SNGPL says that the decision has been taken owing to a sharp increase in domestic gas consumption and reduction in gas and re-gas rates.
As such, the All Pakistan CNG Association has rejected the closure of CNG stations, terming it illegal to cut off supply to CNG stations in the two provinces.
Notwithstanding the public outcry, Peshawar’s administration has notified the closure of CNG stations from January 1 through January 31 in a bid to secure gas supplies for domestic use. This decision has been taken on the guidelines issued by provincial home department aiming to ensure uninterrupted supply of gas to domestic consumers. However, the situation at the domestic consumers’ side remains the same as the gas loadshedding has badly affected the routine life activities during the current cold wave sweeping the country.
As the supply of natural gas to domestic consumers is yet to improve to a desired level, over 542 CNG stations in different regions of the province have been pulled stopping levers, multiplying the miseries of the citizens. Commuters have been complaining since the decision was implemented that taxi and auto-rickshaw drivers had increased fares on their own.
According to a spokesman for SNGPL, gas supply has been suspended to 188 CNG stations in Peshawar district, 156 in Mardan, Nowshera, Malakand and Swabi, 131 in Abbottabad, Haripur and Mansehra, and 67 in Charsadda and Kohat.
The closure of CNG stations has directly resulted in the hike of transport fares both on intra district and inter-district routes. The decision has compelled the owners of tri-wheelers and other local transport, which mainly run on CNG, to use expensive liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to keep running their hearths. To meet their expenses, transporters, especially auto-rickshaw drivers, have jacked up the fares citing the closure of CNG stations as the major reason.
Being a zero sum game, the gas closure to CNG stations has neither benefited the CNG and transport sectors, nor afforded any advantage to the domestic consumers. The economic theory behind the decision is to benefit one side to an equivalent loss of the other side. Here, the decision has proved less effective to benefit either of the sides. The government needs to come up with a more feasible solution to overcome the gas crisis to benefit all sides alike.
