PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Oil and Gas Company Limited (KPOGCL) has decided to take up the issue of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) with the federal government so that the province could use the utility to meet its needs.

This was informed by Chief Executive Officer (CEO) KPOGCL Raziuddin Razi during a briefing to the media here on Thursday.

He said that as enshrined in Article 158 of theConstitution, the province had the right to use the natural gas being explored and produced there. `Therefore we are taking the case to the federal government and the court, if needed, so that we can utilise our resource of LPG and raise its production from the current 339 metric tons to 2,000 metric tons. We want to distribute the utility from southern parts of the province right to Chitral district,` Mr Razi said.

He added KPOGCL along with other resources wanted to develop the LPG and bring it in for household and automotive use.

About the oil production of the province he said the province was investing bullishly in oil and gas to produce more and more oil, gas and LPG not to only strengthen its once fragile economy but also to provide these utilities to oil and gas deficient Punjab.

He said that the 50,000 barrel per day (bpd) of crude oil, worth Rs300 million was being produced in the province, which was over 50 per cent of the total national production of 92,000 bpd. The CEO added that only two years ago the crude oil production of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was 30,000 bpd but after recording a whopping increase of 60 per cent it had now jumped up to 50,000 bpd thus saving Rs45 billion foreign exchange for the country.

He said gas production in the province had also increased to 400 million cubic feet per day and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa LPG production had also gone up from meagre 10 tons to 470 tons per day, which also eased burden on the national exchequer as the utility is mostly used by the poor.