Last year 2009 Sharjah saw its natural gas consumption soar by over 30 per cent according to official figures released to the Emirates News Agency (WAM).
The report cited the Emirate’s tremendous pace of socio-economic and industrial development as the principal reason for the sky-high increases.
“Gas connection points saw a substantial increase to 156,859 in 2009 from 133,227 in 2008. Supply of natural gas pumped by gas stations to various Sharjah areas rose 32.3 million cubic metres by the end of 2009 from 26.7 million cubic metres,” according to Eng. Tareq Demas, Director of Natural Gas, SEWA.
He said that consumers of natural gas increased spectacularly by 24,700 to 155,163 in 2009 from 130,433.
“SEWA’s gas pumping stations have large reserve capacities to satisfy any expected demand for gas in the future,” he added.
“The Sharjah Piped Natural Gas Project is progressing as schedule and the network has reached the Emirates Industrial Area in Sajaa. The gas network in the Sharjah city has stretched 1,600 kilometres. Connections are being laid down for the newly developed residential, commercial and industrial areas,” he added.
SEWA has introduced piped natural gas service for domestic, commercial and industrial uses in Sharjah City. In conjunction with this new service, SEWA also arranges conversion of cookers currently fired by PLG cylinders to natural gas system. Another project within the framework of SEWA policy is to exploit the feasibility of natural gas as an efficient fuel, that is the use of compressed natural gas (CNG) as fuel for vehicles instead of petrol is in progress.
He indicated that 14 contractors had been qualified to commission the gas connections for domestic consumers in Sharjah city. SEWA is supervising these projects to ensure efficiency and quality of connections.
At present, he added, gas supplies are piped to about 1600 restaurants and cafeterias.
“SEWA is exploring the possibility of using gas in other sectors like air-conditioning,” he said.
