ISLAMABAD: The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) has decided to hold two-day public hearing for the Estimated Revenue Requirements (ERR) of two gas companies, the Sui Northern Gas Pipeline Ltd (SNGPL) and the Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) for financial year 2020-2021 at a local hotel in Islamabad on June 24.

The public hearing will be held in the capital city after a long time due to the coronavirus spread. In the past, the OGRA usually held public hearing on the petitions of gas companies in Lahore, Karachi, and Quetta.

In their revised petitions, the SNGPL has sought approximately Rs73 billion form its gas consumers, while the SSGC would ask to collect Rs37 billion to meet its financial requirements during the upcoming financial year. The new prices, if approved, will be effective from July 1st, 2020. The projection of the SNGPL for financial year 2020-2021 reflect an increase of Rs622.94 per mmbtu including previous years' shortfall (Rs85.50 per mmbtu for financial year 2020-2021) only in normal business, and Rs102.08 per mmbtu as cost of supply for RLNG business.

The SNGPL has a network of 7.6 million including industrial, commercial and domestic.

In petition, cost of gas has been shown Rs163.047 billion and sale price is Rs214.509 billion.

The Sui Northern in its revised petition has asked for average prescribed gas price at Rs1, 287.19 per mmbtu with increase by 47.8 percent, based on the previous shortfalls of Rs378.18 per mmbtu for 2018-2019, and Rs92.88 per mmbtu for 2019-2020. The current prescribed gas price (cost of gas) stands at Rs664.25 per mmbtu.

The Sui Northern has also asked for recovery of another Rs73.89 billion from the LNG consumers from July 1st for diverting the costly RLNG to the domestic sector in Punjab.

The Sui Southern has submitted its revised petition seeking an increase in gas price by Rs85.35 per mmbtu to Rs881.53 per mmbtu.

The current prescribed gas price of Sui Southern stands at Rs796.18 per mmbtu.

The Sui Southern has also included in the petition for gas tariff another amount of Rs6.5 billion in the head of the RLNG for revenue requirement in the RLNG business to be effective from July 1st.

One of the stakeholders, the CNG sector has written letters three times to the OGRA chairperson to hold public hearing by end of June 2020. The OGRA chairperson's retirement is due on July 14, 2020.