Prioritising gas usage

The early arrival of winter has created countrywide gas shortage issues once again; business managers are in the conference rooms, the affected bodies (industries and others) in courts and the protestors threatening to come on roads.
A major announcement in this regard was made by the Prime Minister who ensured CM Punjab of indiscriminate and just gas supply to the industrial sector of the largest province.
The gas load management is more of a strategic decision of prioritising the allocation to different consumer slabs. PMs assurance to Punjab will demand reprioritising gas distribution on an urgent basis which is an uphill task as there was no plan announced previously other than the hollow assurance of the gas supply restoration.
How will SNGPL distribute additional gas from its own network is a tricky question, because the interconnection with the SSGC is limited and does not allow export to the other network in sizeable quantities. What SNGPL can do instead, is decide quickly on supply priorities, which many experts believe should be to the power sector, industries, commercial sector and domestic, in that order of priority.
All the stakeholders should live with the fact that there is gas shortage in the country for whatever reasons. The gas-for-all mentality needs to go as it is not sustainable in the current scenario, with little development on gas exploration or LNG imports, high inefficiency of the distributors and criminal non-optimal usage of gas in the domestic and transport sectors.
"We made the integrated energy plan two years back which allowed better management of gas, but the plan has not been implemented. The CNG sector should be discouraged and should only be confined to buses; the domestic consumers should only be supplied gas for cooking purposes. The power sector needs the gas most followed by the industrial and commercial sectors - there is no other way out until we start importing LNG and the pipelines come to work", said Farooq Rehmatullah, an industry expert, speaking to BR Research.
It is a shame that domestic consumers are allowed to use natural gas for room and water heating purposes, while all other countries in the region have shifted to solar heater systems for these purposes. It should be kept in mind that gas used for domestic purposes just delivers 20 percent efficiency according to industry experts, which means a huge chunk is wasted, despite being offered at cheaper rates.
The CNG sector, which consumes nearly 8 percent, is another major contributor to the problem. Pakistan already tops the list of having most CNG vehicles in the world by a fair distance, which is hampering the power and industrial sector performance.
It is high time that the government restricts the usage of CNG to public buses where the price differential to petrol will rightly benefit the needy, unlike the present state where even owners of 1000cc plus cars enjoy the CNG price differential.
Sane voices from the industry have been demanding for parity in CNG and petrol prices which would automatically bring CNG usage down; reportedly there has been some progress on this issue of late, and could yield good results.
But the strong lobby that the CNG association is, it has secured a stay on gas suspension from the honourable court, which would mean further gas curtailment either for the power sector or the industrial one. And both will be catastrophic for the economy at the cost of criminal usage of gas by the transport sector. It is time that the policymakers strategise the allocation as recommended earlier by experts, or the saga will continue