LPG policy on hold: PM forms 8-member committee, one month to review plan to end OGRA pricing

LPG policy 2026: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has formed an eight-member ministerial committee to review the Petroleum Division's proposed LPG reforms, putting on hold a plan that would have taken OGRA out of LPG pricing within a week. The committee has one month to report, Dawn reported on Saturday. The pause came after LPG marketing companies and dealers protested that the policy had been finalised without asking them.

For households the timing matters: Dawn puts the market price of an 11.57 kg domestic cylinder at Rs 6,000 to Rs 7,200, roughly double OGRA's notified Rs 3,296, after Iranian border supply stopped earlier in October and imports by sea fell.

Who sits on the committee

The petroleum minister chairs it. The other members are the ministers for economic affairs and information, the PM's adviser on interprovincial coordination, the special assistant on energy, the petroleum secretary, the director general of liquefied gases and the head of the Government Relations Unit. Its brief covers three things: the proposed LPG reforms, cylinder standards and a "local LPG model".

What the Petroleum Division proposed

According to the cabinet summary Dawn has seen, the plan would:

1. End OGRA's monthly LPG price notification for local and imported gas, with immediate effect.
2. Hand price-setting to state companies. PSO, the two Sui companies, PARCO and Pakistan LNG would set a monthly import-parity price based on Saudi Aramco's contract price (CP), plus last month's premiums, freight, insurance and import taxes, the same way petrol and diesel prices are worked out.
3. Let state companies import LPG in bulk, with financial bids kept off the PPRA website, citing "urgency".
4. Raise marketing and import margins to at least Rs 50,000 a tonne, from Rs 35,000, the first change since the 2016 LPG policy.
5. Pay local producers only a CP-linked price. The gap between that price and PSO's import-parity price would go into a new Producer-Price Differential Fund, audited by the Auditor General, to subsidise poor households through the BISP scorecard.
6. Split local LPG 10/90. 10% would go to state marketers at producer price for Gilgit-Baltistan, the northern areas and other remote regions; 90% would be auctioned monthly to prequalified bottlers, with a floor of 5% of PSO's import-parity price.

The Competition Commission and OGRA would be asked to watch for collusion.

Why the industry objected

Private companies told the government that state firms have little experience importing LPG, and that a levy on locally produced gas would push prices up. They also want the Saudi CP link dropped, since most of Pakistan's LPG imports come from Iran and Oman rather than Saudi Arabia.

What it means for you

Nothing changes on the official price for now: OGRA's November notification is still due under the current system, and we will add it to our LPG price page the day it is issued. If the reform goes through, LPG would be priced like petrol, monthly against an import benchmark, and poorer households would get any relief through BISP rather than through a low notified price that shops rarely honour.

If you are comparing LPG with piped gas this winter, our gas bill calculator works out a monthly SNGPL or SSGC bill at the current slabs.