Fact-check: Households to get gas only three times a day?

Both the state-owned Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) and Sui Southern Gas Company Limited (SSGC) deny that any new timings have become effective for the supply of gas

Geo Fact-Check

Updated Wednesday Dec 13 2023

Posts gaining traction on Facebook claim that Pakistan will face severe gas load shedding this winter, as natural gas will only be available for eight hours a day.

An image with the logo of the government-owned Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) is also going viral which purports to show the new timings for when gas will be available for households.

The claim is false.

Claim

On November 17, a Facebook user shared an image with the caption: “The Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited has issued a new schedule for gas in winters.”

As per the image, natural gas will be supplied to domestic consumers from 6am to 9am in the mornings, 11:30am to 1:30pm in the afternoons and 5:30pm to 8:3pm in the evenings.

The post had been shared over 17 times and liked 10 times, at the time of writing.

Identical claims have been shared by other Facebook users here and here.

Fact

Both the state-owned SNGPL and Sui Southern Gas Company Limited (SSGC), which are tasked with the distribution of natural gas in the country, deny that any new timings have become effective for the supply of gas this winter.

Amjad Ikram, the spokesperson of the SNGPL, told Geo Fact Check over the phone that the schedule for gas load shedding has not been revised to morning, afternoon or evening timings.

“We do shut gas supply at night, from 10pm to 6am but for domestic consumers only,” he said, adding that for the industrial sector, gas is available uninterrupted round the clock.

SNGPL overlooks the gas supply to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab as well as some areas of Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

Geo Fact Check then reached out to Salman Siddiqui, spokesperson of SSGC, who also rejected claims of any new timings.

Siddiqui explained that his company shuts down the gas supply from 10:30pm to 5:3am every day for domestic consumers. SSGC is in charge of gas transmission and distribution to Sindh and Balochistan.

Furthermore, Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited has rebutted these claims on their official social media handles here and here.

With additional reporting by Fayyaz Hussain.