The issue surfaced when Bloomberg on July 29 reported that Pakistan purchased four cargoes of Liquefied Natural Gas for September delivery at around $15 per million British thermal units, the highest since the nation began imports in 2015.

As a usual practice, on Monday the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority — the regulatory body — notified provisional price of LNG at its website.

According to a Dawn report, the LNG price notified by the Ogra in August for the forthcoming month was $20.055 per unit which was 5.5 per cent higher than the price of crude purchased in July.

The report further said the LNG price was not only the highest ever in the country but perhaps the second highest summer purchase in the world.

However, Azhar in a message on Twitter on Monday rejected the report saying it was a “fake alert”.

Later on Tuesday, the Ogra withdrew the notification through a press release stating that the PSO had informed the regulator that the tender was scrapped.

In its latest Tweet, Azhar further mentioned that the measures of transparency were taken to end “speculation and misreporting”.