Daily Times

Two wrongs cannot make a right is the piece of advice that this government needs to be given at this time for coming up with a natural gas policy based on an approach bound to fail. The accumulated baggage of the past governments’ unwise policies with regard to fuel and energy resources, which this government inherited, cannot be undone with another set of ill-advised, anti-people policies that add to the already substantial burden on the consumers. The mammoth proposed increase in gas tariff varying between 14 percent to 207 percent on all categories of consumers is aimed at an additional revenue generation of Rs 385 billion for the gas utilities and generating funds for gas import projects, including the Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, laying of LNG infrastructure and to provide subsidy to local consumers as otherwise the cost of imported gas would be too high for them to afford.

The policy has been devised at a time when continuous electricity load shedding and gas load management plan are already facing severe criticism and protests by the poor masses. The gas tariff increase is going to coincide with a hike of about 1-5 percent in petroleum prices being passed on to consumers in a few days to keep pace with higher international oil prices. In this scenario, when economic activities have almost come to a standstill and the common man finds himself incapable of securing even a square meal a day, this tariff would prove lethal for everyone. Even the policy of injecting costlier imported LNG in the system to meet the fuel shortage would not sustain owing to the fast sliding purchasing power of the masses. The government should review the summary sent by the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority, outlining the factors that have resulted in irrational tariff increases. The influential parliamentarians’ gas development schemes in their areas approved by the prime minister needs to be rolled back immediately. According to the rules, gas utilities cannot launch new schemes as they have already failed to provide gas to existing consumers. Moreover, as a result of these schemes the gas utilities have to generate funds to meet 70 percent cost of development and also the cost of operations of about Rs 15 billion per annum. These new schemes, at the cost of consumers, for securing political mileage in the next elections do not make sense. There is also a dire need to minimise the gas transmission losses that stand at 13 percent, costing Rs 20 billion to the exchequer. Instead of increasing the price of the increasingly scarce commodity, the government should focus on acceleration of oil and gas exploration, as imports cannot prove a viable option in the long run. *