A Sui Southern Gas Company announcement said the CNG stations in Sindh and Hub in Balochistan would remain shut from 9am on Friday to 9am on Saturday.

With the announcement of CNG shutdown the unprecedented long queues of vehicles at gas filling stations extending onto main roads caused severe traffic jams all over the business areas of the city on Thursday evening.

In view of the ECC decision, it was decided to shut down gas to the CNG stations in Karachi for 24 hours from 9 am today, December 23 to 9 am on Saturday, December 24, 2011.

The decision to discontinue gas to the CNG stations on a periodic basis follows an extraordinarily low pressure situation that has badly affected overall gas supply in Sindh.

Desperate owners and drivers of vehicles were flabbergasted to learn that another CNG shutdown was announced with a space of 24 hours of the one that had just ended in the morning.

According to sources, between 900,000 and one million private vehicles were running on CNG in Karachi alone. In addition, 16,000 public transport vehicles buses, minibuses, taxis and auto-rickshaws were also using CNG.