Islamabad: Official estimates and energy experts have suggested that Pakistan was most likely to face a major energy crisis in natural gas, power and oil in the next three to four years that could block the economic growth for many years to come.
One of the country’s former oil ministers said that Pakistan’s total energy requirement would increase by about 48 per cent to 80 million tons of oil equivalent (MTOE) in 2010 from about 54 MTOE currently, but major initiatives of meeting this gap are far from turning into reality.
Major shortfall is expected in the natural gas supplies, the Dawn quoted the minister who served in the present government as saying.
Quoting official energy demand forecast, the minister said that the demand for natural gas, having about 50 per cent share in the country’s energy consumption, would increase by 44 per cent to 39 MTOE from 27 MTOE currently.
Partly contributed by gas shortfalls, the power shortage is expected to be little over 5250 MW by 2010, he said, adding that the oil demand would also increase by over 23 per cent to about 21 million tons in 2010 from the current demand of 16.8 million tons.
According to him, this would leave a total deficit of about nine million tons of diesel and furnace oil imports. Since the gas shortfalls were expected to be much higher, the country would need to enhance its dependence on imported oil, thus increasing pressure on foreign exchange situation, he added.
The country’s Planning Commission sources said the government had planned to add an overall power generation capacity of about 7880 MW by 2010, and out of this about 4860 MW is to be based on natural gas, accounting for 61 per cent of capacity expansion.
According to World Bank estimates also, a demand gap (supply shortage) of about four per cent of the total demand, is expected in 2010.
Even though this gap would be met by LNG imports, it would again increase to 20 per cent of the total demand. The bank said the indigenous gas supply would fall from 32.6 MTOE in 2010 to 20.7 MTOE in 2025 while the ‘gas supply-demand gap’ would rapidly increase as demand is expected to grow continuously, quadrupling in 2025.
Comments
0 comment