ISLAMABAD: Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) has been consideringconstructing a 1,100 kilometre (km) long North-South Gas Pipeline (NSGP) ata cost of $1 billion.
Well-informed sources apprised *Pakistan Today *that a plan to constructNSGP was presented in a meeting of the Board of Directors (BoD) of SNGPL onSeptember 12, 2020 wherein the SNGPL had proposed to lay down 1,100 km longgas pipeline from Karachi to Lahore at a cost of $1 billion.
They said that Petroleum Additional Secretary Muhammad Ayub Chaudhry hadratified this proposed plan ostensibly to serve the larger nationalinterest and to benefit the national exchequer as well.
They said that Ayub Chaudhry had also recommended adopting a competitiveprocess in the awarding of this gas pipeline project and Pakistanicompanies should also be allowed to participate in the project (NSGP)instead of favourite foreign firms only.
They said SNGPL had the capacity to handle this project (NSGP) while it hadalready served the country and saved Pakistani money by constructing a gaspipeline of a similar capacity. The SNGPL has now proposed that it wouldlay down 42-inch diameter NSGP at a cost of $1 billion which is much lowerto previously estimated construction cost of $2.7 billion, said sources.
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”SNGPL’s business plan/structure for the construction of NSGP has included25 per cent profit of SNGPL in the proposed cost of $1 billion besidescovering technical, legal and financial affairs of NSGP project indetails,” sources added.
Earlier, it was being considered to undertake the construction of NSGP witha Russian nominated company named as ETK at a cost of $2.7 billion.However, Russian nominated ETK company had failed in proving relevantexperience, expertise etc and the ETK company was stopped fromparticipating in the process of awarding the North-South Gas Pipelineproject’s contract.
