• Load shedding of Natural Gas:
Overview: While countries in the west move towards Growth, Pakistan is moving backward. The miraculous Pakistan is blessed with infinite natural resources by the God and natural gas is the most precious one. The recoverable reserves of natural gas have been estimated at 29.671 trillion cubic feet (January 1st 2009). During July-March 2008-09 the production was 3986.5 million cubic feet per day as compared to 3965.9 mmcfd during the corresponding period last year showing an increase of 0.52%. Presently 26 private and public sector companies are engaged in oil and gas exploration and production activities. Total natural gas production by company wise is given below. Following are the natural gas fields in the Pakistan:
• Adkhi
• Badim
•Bhit gas field
• Khasan gas field
• Kandanwari gas field
• Kandkhot field (13 TCF, 347×109m³)
• Khan field
• Mari field
• Miano gas field
• Mizra field
• Sawan gas field
• Sui gas field (2 TCF; 54×109m³)
• Toot gas field
• Ul Haq field (1 TCF; 27×109m³)
• Zamzama field
The Sui gas field is the biggest natural gas field in the Pakistan . It is located near Sui in Baluchistan. The gas field was discovered in the late 1952 and the commercial exploitation of the field began in 1955. The Sui gas field accounts for 26% of Pakistan’s gas production. Remaining reserves are estimated to be at about 800 billion cubic feet ( tcf ) and the daily production is around 660 million cubic feet (19,000,000 m3) of natural. The operator of the field is Pakistan petroleum limited. Other natural gas companies in Pakistan are:
• SUI NORTHERN GAS COMPANY LIMITED
• SUI SOUTHERN GAS COMPANY LIMITED
• PAKISTAN STATE OIL COMPANY LIMITED
• PAKISTAN PETROLEUM LIMITED
• PAK ARAB REFINERY LIMITED
• SAINDAK METALS LIMITED
• LAKHRA COAL DEVELOPMENT COMPANY Ltd
• GOVERNEMNT HOLDINGS (Private) LIMITED
• PAKISTAN MINERAL DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION LIMITED
• INTER STATE GAS SYSTEMS (PVT) LIMITED
• STATE PETROLEUM REFINING AND PETROCHEMICAL CORPORATION (PVT) LTD
• NATIONAL REFINERY LIMITED (NRL)
• OIL AND GAS DEVELOPMENT COMPANY LIMITED
Even with this much resources still The country suffering at the hands of corrupt politicians and terrorism has much graver problems and one of them is Load shedding of Natural Gas. People are crying their hearts out in front of the government to provide them with the basic necessity of Gas but the government seems to have no clue about how to solve this problem. Effects : Gas and power shortages have caused the textile sector’s production capacity to fall 70 percent during January to August 2013, said member units of All Pakistan Textile Mills Association on Monday. Seven to eight hours long power shortages are pushing the production potential down to 70 percent, which is alarming. The fertilizer sector produced five million tons of urea in 2009 against a capacity of five million tons, 5.15 million tons against a capacity of 5.6 million tons in 2010, 4.9 million tons compared with 6.9-million-ton capacity in 2011. The fertilizer sector's performance remained completely poor in 2012 due to an abnormal reduction in gas supply. Barely 4.1 million tons of urea was produced against an installed capacity of 6.9 million tons. The sharp decline in the overall production was primarily due to frail functioning of SNGPL-based fertilizer plants, confronting the worst gas crisis. SNGPL-based fertilizer plants brought about only 11.6 percent of their total urea production capacity. Urea production of such plants stood only at 256,500 tons urea. This is the lowest-ever output of these fertilizer plants in any of the year. Fertilizer manufacturers in Pakistan suffered over 2.7 million tons urea production loss in 2012 mainly due to gas curtailment. Pakistan also incurred significant losses by importing urea worth over $1 billion and providing a subsidy of over Rs 50 billion on imported urea over the same period. All four SNGPL-based fertilizer plants incurred significant losses over the last two years because of non-supply of gas. CNG Load shedding: CNG which is environment friendly and is much cheaper than Petrol (Gasoline) and Diesel, and also is preference of most of vehicle owners in Pakistan. Pakistan has the greatest number of CNG refill stations and CNG vehicles. But today, Pakistan is facing CNG cricies Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is used in more than 2.5 million vehicles. Most of the middle class people are using it as it is cheaper than petrol. The Pakistani public is extremely offended at the Government due to the ongoing CNG load-shedding. Majority of public transporters in Pakistan don't do their transport business during the days CNG isn't available. Domestic Users: The most suffering sector due to gas load shedding is domestic sector . in our urban areas the most used fuel for the house hold usage is natural gas , and the load shedding in this sector is causing people a very tough routine to carry their fuel needs , availability of the other fuels like wood, kerosene oil and LPG are costly and scarce, so the living is going tough and costly. The Electricity load shedding is also causing the increased use of natural gas as the fuel for generating electricity this is causing an excessive use of natural gas and increased load over the resources. Here the engines used are less efficient and locally assembled which are causing extra load over the system.
Solution
The solution to these problems are: The industry is the most important part and the back bone of our country so it is critical to keep the industry running , so we have to visualize that from which sector we can spare the gas for the use in industry and the sectors critical to supply here we have the transportation sector where the government has not controlled the usage as small cars, mini vans, saloon cars light trans port vehicles and even the large lorries and buses are fitted to run over gas which are using the gas in the scaring fast ratio. The government should have controlled the installation of the vehicles and should have limited the use up to the small cars which are being used by the middle class users , high class can afford the gasoline and diesel for their vehicles , they should make a policy for the cars engine limit to be installed over natural gas . this would decrease the over use of the gas and it would be easy to control the regulation of the available resources . The load shedding of electricity must be controlled so that the low quality generation systems should not be used in the domestic sector. And the valuable fuel can be provided to the users that need it the most.
