Natural gas stations break environment laws

The Pakistan Environment Protection Agency (PEPA) is in touch with licensing authorities to determine how 20 to 25 compressed natural gas (CNG) filling stations had been set up in the capital, Islamabad, without PEPA clearance certificates, according to an official. "We are in touch with the concerned authorities and also with the owners of the gas stations," Asif Shuja Khan, the PEPA director-general, told IRIN in Islamabad on Wednesday. "If these gas stations are discovered to be defaulters, we will take action against them," he said. The Pakistan Environmental Protection Act, 1997, makes it mandatory for any projects deemed to produce adverse environmental effects to seek approval from environmental protection agencies before they can be set up. But the president of the All Pakistan CNG Stations Association told Dawn, a leading English-language broadsheet, that gas station owners had sought licences and no objection certificates (NoCs) from the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority, maintaining that "if there had been a requirement for another NoC concerning environmental clearance, we would have followed that up too". Khan said, however, that it was essential that all CNG stations take remedial measures before they caused any more damage to the environment. "Compressed natural gas results in methane leakage, which is of global concern, because it is a greenhouse gas," he explained, adding that his agency would issue directives to all defaulting CNG filling station units to observe environmental standards. "We are also in touch with the Capital Development Authority's directorate of environment, as well as the Ministry of Petroleum," he added. Other than emitting environmentally damaging substances, CNG filling stations can also sometimes present another hazard. In early December, a CNG plant blew up at a filling station owned by a multinational in an upmarket locality in the southern port city of Karachi, injuring 17 people, including a four-year-old boy, and setting off a blaze that firefighters took about four hours to extinguish.