Sardar Talib Hassan Nakai, Chairman National Assembly Standing Committee, presided over the meeting, which was attended by Nawab Ali Wasan, Sheikh Aftab Ahmed, M Hanif Abbasi, Abdul Waseem and Muhammad Usman Advocate here on Monday.

The Ogra officials told the meeting that provisional CNG licenses were banned, however marketing licences were not banned.
An Ogra official said that the authority on the directives of Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani issued 20 new CNG licences.

The committee directed the department concerned to submit details of new connections in the next meeting of the standing committee.
Ijaz Chauhdry, Secretary Petroleum briefing the committee admitted that his ministry had taken certain steps to cover the bridge between gas demand and supply, but failed in bringing any visible change.

He admitted that new commercial connections were awarded on political basis.
He informed the committee that gas production in the country had been increased to 7 per cent, while consumption was increasing by 40 per cent annually mainly because of providing gas connections to new areas on political basis.

He said that during last few years hydel generation has decreased, as not a single Megawatt of hydel power was included in the system during last five years, while no work had been done on LPG and coal.
He said that four fertiliser plants had been closed for the last four months due to gas load management plan, adding that all the major industrial plants were relaying on thermal energy, as they had no other option.

He said that exploration work on Thar coal was not expected in the next four to five years.
The secretary Petroleum said that 200 mmcfd had not been explored so far because companies were not ready to explore the gas on present prices.

He said that cost of a single well digging was more than $30 million, while one out of four well became productive as per estimates.
Chauhdry said that 17 per cent physical work on Pak-Iran gas pipeline had been completed, as $1.5 billion was required for the project.

He said that ministry had collected Rs 35 billion through petroleum levy and through this amount ministry would get loan from banks in the country for the project.

He said that 750 mmcfd imported gas from Iran would meet 30 percent of our requirements, adding that current shortfall of gas in the country was 2.03 bccfd.

Chairman of the committee Sardar Talib Nakai said that 50 per cent gas was wasted through theft and the ministry had not taken any step to rein in the practice.

He said that teams carried out raids at domestic consumers, but not on commercial consumers.