China’s energy firms are reducing gas supplies to industry to avoid having to cut off households during winter, but risking more factory shutdowns, dampening production and raising costs as shortages may worsen.
PetroChina (中石油), the country’s leading gas supplier, said yesterday it would make a second cut of 3 million cubic meters in the daily amount it delivers to industrial users in northern China, reducing their volumes by another 10 percent.
PetroChina has also cut 3 million cubic meters per day, or 8 percent, from supplies to firms in the Yangtze River delta and the provinces of Hunan and Hubei, as well as trimming flows to industries in the southwest and northwest, the main gas producing regions.
As demand peaks in December and January, gas shortages are expected to reach 8 million cubic meters daily in north China and between 5 million and 6 million cubic meters per day in the south, the China Petroleum Daily, an in-house newspaper of CNPC, PetroChina’s parent, said yesterday.
In southwestern Chongqing, taxis lined up for compressed natural gas as a sudden drop in temperatures slowed pipeline flows, lengthening refueling time. Many were reluctant to shift to gasoline, which costs three times as much.
Gas supplies for taxis in Wuhan in Hubei province were halted from Nov. 16, forcing the local government to dole out subsidies to taxi drivers who switched to expensive gasoline.
Many industrial firms in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province, were shut because of gas shortages, while several hundred buses in Zhengzhou, in central Henan Province, faced being grounded amid gas supply tightness.
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