Four-hour load shedding in industrial areas announced

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

* Reason said to be curtailment of gas supply by SSGC

KARACHI: The Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) on Tuesday announced four-hour-long load shedding every day for the feeders of two industrial areas, till the gas supply to the power-generating units is not resumed.

The industrial feeders have generally been divided into two groups - one belonging to Korangi and the other to SITE. The first group will experience load shedding from 4pm to 8pm while the other group from 6pm to 10pm. The industrial load shedding would continue till the gas supply to KESC is restored.

Although the KESC has never received full supply of gas as per its approved quota of 276 million metres cubic feet per day (mmcfd), its minimum winter requirement is even less than half of this quota, that is, 110 mmcfd. The Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) faces a shortfall of about 80 mmcfd due to technical fault in different gas fields located in Sindh.

A spokesman of SSGC said in a statement, the Bhit gas field operated by ENI developed a technical fault in its compressor, which forced the field to reduce gas supply by 50 mmcfd. Normally, Bhit gas field supplies 340 mmcfd gas to SSGC. The ENI will take two days to repair the fault, after which the supply will return to normal.

Additionally, as a result of a major power breakdown at the Zamzama gas field, operated by BHP, the gas production came to a halt at 12:30pm. Zamzama injects about 210 mmcfd to the SSGC’s system. Gas injection re-started at about 1:45pm and would take five to six hours to normalise.

After carefully reviewing the situation, SSGC’s Gas Load Management Committee decided to reduce gas supply to KESC from 80 mmcfd to 50 mmcfd till the normalisation of gas supply from the effected gas fields.

SSGC assures domestic and bulk customers that as soon as the supply position improves, the company will restore normal gas supply to the KESC.