Pakistan’s Senate has received a bill proposing quarterly determinations of natural-gas prices, with licensees required to submit revenue requirements covering wellhead-gas prices and imported-gas costs. The proposal also provides that the regulator would not hold a public hearing when revising prescribed prices under the new mechanism.
The measure is titled The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2026. The official bill is headed “INTRODUCED ON 30.10.2026”, recording its introduction on 30 October 2026.
The Senate agenda for that date listed the measure as a government bill to be introduced. It identified the proposed legislation as an amendment to the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority Ordinance, 2002, the law into which the new quarterly pricing provision would be inserted.
Quarterly submissions and prescribed prices
The bill would add Section 8A to the ordinance, under the heading “Quarterly review of natural gas pricing”. That section sets out the proposed quarterly submission requirement and a subsequent process involving the federal government and the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority.
Under the proposed wording, a natural-gas licensee would submit its total revenue requirement to the Authority every quarter. The submission would be limited to wellhead-gas prices and the cost of imported gas, giving the quarterly requirement a defined scope.
The distinction between the term “total revenue requirement” and the stated limit is important to the proposal. The draft identifies those two gas-cost elements for the quarterly submission; it should not be described as an unrestricted quarterly review of every cost a licensee might incur.
After the licensee’s submission, the draft provides for a federal-government and Authority process concerning prescribed prices. The proposed arrangement therefore involves more than a licensee submitting a revenue figure: it also sets out an official process for dealing with the resulting prescribed-price determination.
A 30-day period is included in that process. It is part of the proposed statutory mechanism, alongside the quarterly submission requirement. The quarterly interval and the 30-day period are separate features of the draft, rather than interchangeable descriptions of its timing.
The proposal concerns how pricing determinations would be handled, not a settled direction for prices. A quarterly mechanism does not, by itself, establish that prices would rise or fall at each review. The introduction of the bill is distinct from an actual determination of new prescribed prices.
Public-hearing provision
The bill also proposes an amendment to Section 9 of the ordinance. Its wording states that a public hearing shall not be held by the Authority for a revision of prescribed prices under Section 8A, expressly linking the hearing provision to the new quarterly mechanism.
That link defines the scope of the proposed hearing exclusion. The provision concerns prescribed-price revisions made under Section 8A. It is not presented here as a general change to public hearings across all the Authority’s activities, which would go beyond the stated amendment.
The two proposed changes operate together: Section 8A would establish the quarterly revenue-submission and prescribed-price process, while the amendment to Section 9 would specify that revisions under that section proceed without an Authority public hearing. Both remain elements of the bill introduced in the Senate.
The measure remains a legislative proposal, rather than an enacted change being reported as already in force. Its introduction establishes that the Senate has received the proposed amendments; it does not establish that the quarterly arrangements have taken effect or that any particular gas-price revision has been made.
