SINGAPORE Nov 1 (Reuters) - Malaysian energy utility Tenaga Nasional Bhd will have to deal with gas shortages for another two to three months, the country's energy minister said on Tuesday. He said for now Tenaga will have to deal with losses caused by having to substitute costly fuel oil for power generation, as electricity prices will remain unchanged. "At the moment, the electricity price stays, that is a government decision," Malaysia's Minister of Energy, Green Technology and Water Peter Chin said on the sidelines of the Singapore International Energy Week conference. "Tenaga as an operating company and Petronas as a gas supplier will have to work within this pricing system at the moment." Tenaga has been buying fuel oil to replace natural gas for electricity generation, which its chief executive has said cost the company an additional 2.1 billion ringgit ($684 million) for the second half of 2011. Chin said the government has received several requests from Tenaga for help to cope with higher fuel costs. "We will look at that and see what we can do to help. Certainly we will not leave Tenaga in the woods," he said. Chin said the cause of the gas shortage was a lack of maintenance on production platforms operated by state oil and gas group Petronas. "We have to grapple with this issue for the next two to three months. It is a maintenance issue rather than a complete lack of gas," he said. ($1=3.068 Malaysian Ringgit) (Reporting by Seng Li Peng; Writing by Michael Urquhart, editing by Miral Fahmy)

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