The natural gas shortfall is expected to cross two billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) during winter, which surely will force the government to curtail supply to industry and other sectors excluding domestic consumers, top officials of ministry of petroleum and natural resources said on Saturday.

According to officials, Pakistan at present was facing acute gas shortage, which during December-January will cross two bcfd mark, because of fall in temperature and increase in its domestic consumption.

“It all depends on temperature, because gas shortage increases with the fall in temperature, as one degree fall in temperature means 20-30 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) decrease of gas,” said one of the top officials.

The official added that the ministry of petroleum was making all-out effort to deal with the looming gas shortage, but the country has limited resources. They said an estimated 300 mmcfd gas supply from Sui, Kunar-Pasaki and Khand-Kot fields would be added to the system in one month, but it was not enough to overcome the crisis.

Officials said gas shortfall would be highest in Punjab, because of reduction in supply to SNGPL system, which fell to about 1.9 bcfd from a peak of 2.5 bcfd.

The official said gap between supply and demand has already reached 800 mmcfd. “The shortfall is estimated to cross 2 bcfd during peak winter, adding that at present the government has two options to cope with the shortfall,” he added.

First, to pass on the entire shortfall to the industrial sector in view of the fact that all industries had supply contracts for nine months even though they would use their political influence to avoid such a situation. Last year, big quantities of gas were diverted from the power sector to the textile industry because the government at the time pushed for additional taxes, but that led to create heavy circular debt, as the requirement for furnace oil increased to offset power shortfalls.

Second, to introduce smart metering for the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) stations and allocate fixed weekly quotas to all CNG stations. Under the arrangement, it will be up to the CNG stations to exhaust their quotas in a day or over a period of seven days depending on the number of vehicles coming for refill.

The supply to the domestic sector could not be curtailed because several urban centres depend on gas for cooking and heating although gas pressures frequently drop owing to low temperatures.

According to official estimates, gas shortfalls are estimated to reach 2.5 bcfd in 2014-15, 3 bcfd in 2015-16 and 3.5 bcfd in 2016-17. The gap is estimated to peak at 5 bcfd by 2020-21, unless major discoveries and field developments are made in coming years.