While chairing a meeting at Petroleum Division on Tuesday Omar Ayub Khan, Federal Minister for Petroleum said that OGRA determines the average price of locally produced gas annually based on projected costs of the two Sui companies. GoP cross subsidizes various categories of customers but used to keep the total collection the same to avoid any subsidy or shortfall. However, since year 2015 despite OGRA suggesting gas prices increase to account for increased costs, the government chose not to pass these costs on to the consumer for over 2 years. He further said this resulted in accumulation of unrecovered cost of PKR 141.8 billion for SNGPL and PKR 38.6 billion for SSGC, or a total of PKR 180 billion, as of June 30, 2018.He claimed that these numbers are based on filings made by gas companies with OGRA and audited accounts prior to the present government. The outgoing government itself recognized the shortfalls in an ECC meeting held on 17.05.2018 and allowed to stagger the same over a period of four years onwards. He mentioned that the new government had no choice but to increase the prices to recover this cost that should have been passed on by the previous government. Anyone taking a position that there was no need of gas price increase with this shortfall in June 2018, which is audited, and confirmed by OGRA, is merely an attempt to hide the facts. *-*-*-*
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