Continued on Page 5 Haveli Bahadur Shah power plant has started partial off-take of 43.5mmcfd for its GTI on May 2017 and the complete of f-take is expected in June 2017.

The Balloki power plant is currently slated to become operational in AugSept 2017, the petroleum ministry wrote, adding: `Full off-take of 600mmcfd RLNG for the three power plantsisnotexpecteduntil September 2017`.

At present, SNGPL is selling over 200mmcfdof indigenousgasas RLNG to cater to the winter requirements when the same amount of RLNG becomes available due to the shut-down of RLNG power plants for conversion to combined cycle. This arrangement will continue until October 2017.

It was noted that Pakistan LNG Limited (PLL) should plan the procurement of LNG cargoes according to demand and hence `a risk-mitigation strategy` should be evolved to avoid a situation where LNG cargoes cannot be re-gasified because no gas off-take is available. Therefore, cargoes are being delayed and PLL has currently not procured LNG cargoes for July or August 2017. Further delays in procurement could attract liquidity damages from international LNG suppliers.After due and extended deliberation, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khagan Abbasi has concluded that the only viable option to avoid financial exposure due to lack of gas off-take is to move the commercial operation date of the second LNG terminal to September 1, 2017.

He has also asked the managing director of Pakistan LNG Terminal Limited (PLTL) to negotiate an arrangement with contractors of the second LNG Terminal revised the commercial operation date to September 1, 2017, provided that there was no adverse material change in the original agreement.