EXCESSIVE USE OF OIL AND LACK OF NATURAL GAS EXTRACTION BEING A HEADACHE FOR PAKISTAN’S ECONOMY

Urooj Fatima

During the last passed years Pakistan’s energy sector giving a hard-time to the industrial sector of the economy. Due to this the GDP growth rate decline with an increasing rate. Many industrialists migrated from Pakistan to abroad. Pakistan is regarded at sixth world’s largest coal reserves state. The government verifies that the quality of coal is coarse but in spite of that government is working to increase the usage of coal in generating electricity but still they are not successful because they claim that (British thermal unit) is low. In the 14th century there are many technologies that can incinerate any kind of coal. The relationship between energy consumption and GDP growth is altitudinous related with each other. The energy inadequacy is due to the circular debts which have a great burden on energy companies due to the unadjusted or unused energy resources and the dependency on natural gas and oil. There is a shortage of oil resources in Pakistan. Energy companies have to import oil from other countries and its cost is also high due to unutilized resources.

 

FISCAL YEAR	PERCENTAGE GROWTH RATE IN IMPORTING OF OIL AND PETROLEUM PRODUCT	SHARE OF PETROLEUM              CONSUMPTION IN POWER SECTOR OF PAKISTAN
2001-2002	-10.03	37.18
2002-2003	-6.49	36.59
2003-2004	-38.72	20.41
2004-2005	9.79	23.53
2005-2006	5.87	28.84
2006-2007	38.63	40.01
2007-2008	8.34	39.18
2008-2009	10.52	42.27
2009-2010	12.07	46.07
2010-2011	10.67	43.09
2011-2012	-6.98	40.66

Nevertheless in 2011-2012 there was downturn facing economy these days. The utilization of petroleum products was 29% of absolute share of energy during 2009-2010. Crude oil is imported from gulf countries in bulk quantity to accommodate the immediate demands. As distinguished agriculture and households by Power, industry and transport sectors devour surpassing quantity of petroleum. In the procreation of electricity, petroleum is also used in generating electricity which computing as 64 percent from the entire share of electricity generation (34 coming from hydro generation).In yearly bases Pakistan have balance of redeemable reserves of crude oil which have been approximately at 303.63 million barrels and we are extracting approximately 24 million crude oil , symbolize that if Pakistan do not pioneer new wells, so in that case we will enervate our present reserves of crude oil in 12-13 years.

Energy sector of Pakistan is reckoned on natural gas reserves. The energy sector gets dilapidate due to insufficient endowing of natural gas. The shortages of natural gas supplies are like stumbling block in performance of energy sector. Pakistan is the preponderant user of the natural gas and total reserves of natural gas which is recoverable approximately at 29.671 billion cubic feet. The natural gas fructification about to 4 billion cubic feet per day. In Pakistan under the head of 15 companies there are 146 nonaffiliated and 44 affiliated? Currently there are 26 private and public sector associations that are working for the extraction of natural gas. The Government of Pakistan for the efficient allocation of natural gas in domestic level launched a policy programmed named as Gas Allocation and Management Policy 2005. The government increased gas supplies through fertilizers so they used gas for domestic production so that the efficient allocation of resources rises up the gas supplies by 46%. In this era the gas was not used in generating power and the 33% share used in different efficient way in the economy.

Pakistan was ranked at 34th as importer of crude oil throughout the world crude oil importing countries. If we correlated japan economy with Pakistan economy so it’s clear that no comparison between them we are very rearward from japan according to the consumption of Natural Gas. Pakistan is ranked on 15th in consumption of Natural Gas despite of that Pakistan has to import petroleum products for fly-fishing the consumption of power sector. On the other hand Japan was ranked on 4th as the user of the Natural Gas so that’s why Japan Balance of Payment is not adverse any more.

In nut shell, Pakistan publicize the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) for the contraction of import bills because in past Pakistan pre-owned petrol for vehicles but import bills does not bank on the use of petrol in vehicles but this circular debt depend on many components.The circular debts can be scale down the applicability of petroleum by substituting it with natural gas. This can be compassed by efficient allocation of natural gas. The use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) in (Natural Gas Vehicle) and Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) curtail the environment detrotriation .The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) control the prices of natural gas for the prerequisite of revenue amount. The SSGCL and SSGC introduce different projects such as these companies start importing of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).The Government of Pakistan curtail the import of oil which reduces excessive use of oil and miss allocation of natural gas by increasing the teamwork on International level and by the progress of Private sector.