KARACHI – The Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) has started 16 hours industrial loadshedding due to shortage of gas supply from Sui Southern Gas Company Limited (SSGC).
The spokesman of the KESC said the utility on Sunday afternoon suffered complete discontinuation of gas supply from SSGC, causing huge deficit in power generation which has totally been shifted to furnace oil now. He said all the generations plants could not be run on oil. Most of the units are gas-fired. Therefore, the utility has been constrained to start loadshedding in industrial areas while it is trying to maintain the normal schedule of residential and commercial areas.
The SSGC was already supplying curtailed quantity to KESC when the SSGC forced total stoppage of the supply despite KESC’s efforts. Due to that the KESC had no choice but to start load shedding in the industrial areas for 16 hours during the day in each of four groups in rotation he informed. He said it is worth mentioning here that for last 18 months industrial areas were completely exempted from any loadshedding. He further informed that KESC’s winter requirement was at least 140 MMCFD but the utility had been sustaining operations at around 60 MMCFD average for a long time. However, finally the gas supply has been totally stopped.
KESC deserves to get top priority for gas supply given that it supplies electricity to 20 million people in Karachi, and thousands of national Industries based in the metropolis. On the contrary, KESC continues to be ranked right at the bottom in terms of gas allocation, which is unfair and discriminatory he complained.
He further spoke that although we have seen the worst crises due to curtail of Gas but due to the bad law and order situation, the administration have selected to start industrial load shedding rather than increase of domestic and commercial load shedding.
On the other side, the spokesman of the SSGC said SSGC facing acute shortfall of natural gas mainly due to decreased gas supplies from the gas producer of different fields and increased demand by domestic costumers due to winter season.
He said due to this SSGC have compelled to curtail the supply of gas to KESC from 60mmcfd to 30 mmcfd. The source of the KESC disclosed that due to the acute shortage of the gas the electricity crises would go up to 20 hours of load shedding while the industrial and commercial sectors have also been severely affected by the problem.
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