Huge reserves of natural gas discovered in Sindh

[Cherokee]

106 million cubic feet is about 3 million cubic meters of natural gas. With Pakistan's estimated daily consumption about 117 million cubic meters per day, these "huge reserves" will last about 36 minutes.

You sir are a Spoilsport . Not to mention 100 percent Extraction is impossible from any field .

 

[niaz]

Sind has many gas producing structures albeit most of them small. On the top of my head I can name Zamzama, Kandwari, sawan, Hala, Mazarni. Qadirpur, Hudi, Sari, Miana, Chachran, Norai Jagir, Kunnar etc. All the fields except Qadirpur are about 1 tcf or less. Qadirpur is the only worthwhile gas field in Sind which at nearly 4-Tcf has reserves of about 720-million barrel oil equivalent.

Standard of journalism in Pakistan has always been extremely poor. Firstly 39-million cubic gas reserves is obviously wrong. This equates to only about 0.07-million barrels. Such a small find is not commercially viable. I would guess that this field has at least 39-billion cft or 7-milion barrels oil equivalent in place. But to call this huge is like having a goat and claiming it is a buffalo.

There is another misconception that if we drill more holes we can produce more gas from the same field. Reservoir engineering is a very specialized subject. Depending upon the type & size of the structure, there is an optimum extraction rate. If too much oil/gas is extracted too soon, it dies and you have wait years before the reservoir recovers enough to start producing.

Additionally, total oil/gas in place or total reserves do not represent that all of this can be commercially extracted. The recovery factor changes with the amount of hydrocarbons in place and actual oil/gas that can be extracted can vary anywhere from 50% to 95%. As rule of thumb recoverable reserves are about 85% to 90% of the oil in place.

I would like to stress that any commercially viable discovery no matter how small is good news. But we should avoid getting europhic about it until such time that we know full details.

According to a report in the business recorder of Jan 20, 2013 gas shortage in Pakistan has crossed 1.6- bcf per day! Even at 39-billion cft, the entire reserves are not enough to make up even one month’s short fall, what comes after?

Such absurd reporting creates nothing but sensationalism and false hope that soon energy shortage will be over. We need about a hundred finds like this one to solve our problem.

 

[Jango]

According to a report in the business recorder of Jan 20, 2013 gas shortage in Pakistan has crossed 1.6- bcf per day! Even at 39-billion cft, the entire reserves are not enough to make up even one month’s short fall, what comes after?

A bit off topic but anyway, I was reading a report on TV that if we cut the supply of CNG to private cars and other such mediums of transport and only give CNG to public transport, we will save enough gas to produce an additional 3000 MW of electricity and also run our industry to a great extent. This was supposedly conveyed to Nawaz Sharif in an energy meeting.
What do you think of this?

 

[mughaljee]

 

[niaz]

A bit off topic but anyway, I was reading a report on TV that if we cut the supply of CNG to private cars and other such mediums of transport and only give CNG to public transport, we will save enough gas to produce an additional 3000 MW of electricity and also run our industry to a great extent. This was supposedly conveyed to Nawaz Sharif in an energy meeting.
What do you think of this?

According to figures available with me Pakistan imported 3.4-million tons of diesel & 1.6 million tons of gasoline during Jan-Dec 2012 period. At current gas oil price of about $1000-per ton and of gasoline at $1,200 per metric ton, 2012 import of diesel & gasoline cost Pakistan roughly $5.4- billion.

By the way, imports also included 146, 500 tons of jet fuel, 4.9 million tons of high sulphur fuel oil & 994, 200 tons of low sulphur fuel oil.

Reportedly Pakistan has close to 3-million vehicles on the road that can use CNG. No doubt this translates into lots of natural gas usage. I have therefore no basis to disagree with the figures quoted by you.

However one must not forget that you need to import additional quantities of other fuels such as LPG, diesel or petrol so that buses & cars that currently use CNG can remain on the road. This would require huge amount of critically short foreign exchange else the country would come to stand still. Also since imported fuel is far more expensive than CNG, price of everything will go up. Can Pakistan afford it?

There you have it; either more CNG for power generation or more FE for imported petrol & diesel.

 

[HAIDER]

Standard of journalism in Pakistan has always been extremely poor

@niaz do you think journalism reflects regionalism or " lifafa " is on the move from political desk all the time. Or we sell national interest in the name of personal favors.

 

[niaz]

@niaz do you think journalism reflects regionalism or " lifafa " is on the move from political desk all the time. Or we sell national interest in the name of personal favors.

Don’t know. But in this case total reserve figure of 39-million cft is definitely incorrect. If it is actually 39-billion cft, the reporter is wrong by 1000 times. If the production capacity is 39-million cft per day than to state daily production as total reserves shows complete ignorance. Besides to head line any discovery of less than 2 or 3 tcf as 'Huge' is an exaggeration to say the least. . Reporter could simply have stated 'large' or substantial.

All this means that the reporting journalist did not do know much about gas reserves and the News Editor did not do proper homework before printing the news.

 

[Jango]

According to figures available with me Pakistan imported 3.4-million tons of diesel & 1.6 million tons of gasoline during Jan-Dec 2012 period. At current gas oil price of about $1000-per ton and of gasoline at $1,200 per metric ton, 2012 import of diesel & gasoline cost Pakistan roughly $5.4- billion.

By the way, imports also included 146, 500 tons of jet fuel, 4.9 million tons of high sulphur fuel oil & 994, 200 tons of low sulphur fuel oil.

Pardon my ignorance, but can't we make the jet fuel and other form of fuel and oil within Pakistan? Import the crude oil and do the rest in Pakistani refineries? Or is it a capacity issue?

 

[Argus Panoptes]

Don’t know. But in this case total reserve figure of 39-million cft is definitely incorrect. If it is actually 39-billion cft, the reporter is wrong by 1000 times. If the production capacity is 39-million cft per day than to state daily production as total reserves shows complete ignorance. Besides to head line any discovery of less than 2 or 3 tcf as 'Huge' is an exaggeration to say the least. . Reporter could simply have stated 'large' or substantial.

All this means that the reporting journalist did not do know much about gas reserves and the News Editor did not do proper homework before printing the news.

A 39 billion cubic feet reservoir would still run out in less than one month at our present rates of consumption.

39 million cubic feet per day is still only 0.5 billion cubic meters per year which is barely just over 1% of our annual consumption.

"Huge" discovery? Hardly, no matter how one tries to rectify the error in reporting.

 

[niaz]

Pardon my ignorance, but can't we make the jet fuel and other form of fuel and oil within Pakistan? Import the crude oil and do the rest in Pakistani refineries? Or is it a capacity issue?

Jet fuel is the virtually the same product as Kerosene. Like all other petroleum products Pakistani demand is more than the refining capacity.

Please understand that it is virtually impossible to balance refinery production and country’s demand. The ratio of different products that you get out of even the most sophisticated refinery will not match the product mix of the local demand.

Pakistan’s is primarily a middle distillates (gas oil + jet based) oriented economy and if you were to expand refining capacity to meet middle distillates, there would surplus of naphtha & gasoline. Nearly all countries import certain products and export what is surplus to their requirement. Even Saudi Arabia imports fuel oil in summer on the Red Sea coast for power generation during the summer months.

Another very important point is that except PARCO, no other refinery in Pakistan has upgrading facilities. Meaning that fuel oil (furnace oil in Pak terminology) which is approx. 40% of 33 API crude feed is not converted into higher value (gasoline, jet & gas oil) products. Because of this lack of sophistication, a state of art refinery such as Reliance Industries of India can generate much higher value from each barrel of crude than Pakistani refineries.

On pure economic terms, if Pakistan purchases crude from Saudi Arabia, transports it in about 90,000 ton ship to Karachi; cost of refined products per ton excluding duties etc. will be more expensive than cost of importing gas oil (diesel) or Jet (kerosene) from the Arab Gulf refineries.