KARACHI: The K-Electric defaulted in payment of its last bill to the Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) and an amount of Rs2.46 billion is overdue, while another payment of Rs8.6 billion will become due on June 3, 2022, a statement said.

According to the statement released by the SSGC, the company will have to either reduce or curtail gas supplies to K-Electric if the latter’s default persists.

The SSGC is supplying indigenous gas supplies to K-Electric on a best endeavour basis on the orders of the High Court of Sindh.

The SSGC started supplying RLNG to K-Electric effective from April 2018, in addition to indigenous gas to meet its requirements as per the decision of Cabinet Committee on Energy (CCOE), while the KE was also directed to make payments to SSGC regularly in the Court’s order.

In the CCoE decision, no threshold of quantities was defined as at that point in time, the SSGC verbally agreed with some volume of indigenous gas, which was based on the then demand and supply numbers, which cannot be demanded in the current times, the statement added.

“It is pertinent to mention that in the last three years, there has been a sharp depletion of indigenous gas supplies to the SSGC which has witnessed a dent of almost 278mmcfd gas, reducing to 881mmcfd in May 2022 from 1,159mmcfd in April 2018.

Besides this, the allocation and supply of RLNG from the Sui Northern Gas Pipeline Limited (SNGPL) quota to the SSGC was around 150mmcfd last year which has been reduced to 75mmcfd this year.”

The SSGC is supplying almost 100 per cent regasified liquefied natural gas (RLNG) it gets to meet the requirements of K-Electric because of its inability to supply indigenous gas any more to the company.