Tawanai

The unjustified LPG price hike is now in notice of the Ministry of Petroleum and Minerals and they have question OGRA (the regulatory) authority on its failure to control the price in the domestic market. The report from Business Recorder gives the details.

Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources has expressed serious reservations over the failure of Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) in playing its due role for controlling LPG prices in the domestic market. Sources revealed to the Business Recorder that the Ministry in a strongly worded letter to Ogra has directed the authority to play its due role and take action against LPG marketing companies that are involved in inflate increase in LPG prices.

According to existing LPG policy, LPG companies are allowed to charge LPG prices that do not exceed the Saudi Aramco Contract Price (CP). “But Ogra has let LPG marketing companies raise the gas price many times during the month of Ramzan,” they said. Petroleum Ministry officials said that delay by Ogra in taking action against LPG marketing companies had raised questions about its role. The role of Ministry of Petroleum is to formulate policies whereas Ogra is a regulator and its responsibility is to ensure a price that does not exceed CP.

When contacted, Executive Director (Operations) Ogra, Sarmad Aslam confirmed that Ogra had received a letter from Ministry of Petroleum and would give its response soon. He said that due to closure of Parco refinery, country was facing LPG shortfall leading to a hike in its price. He maintained that Parco would take around 6-7 days to resume operation. He claimed that Authority had started action against undue hike in LPG prices from the weekend just past.

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Consumers, LPG, OGRA, Pakistan, Policy LPG, Ministry, ogra

Via Technology Review

Biomass can be converted to fuels via a process called gasification, which uses high temperatures to break feedstock down into carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which can then be made into various fuels, including hydrocarbons. But there’s a major drawback–about half of the carbon in the biomass gets converted to carbon dioxide rather than into carbon monoxide, a precursor for fuels. Now researchers in University of Minnesota and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, have developed a method for gasifying biomass that converts all of the carbon into carbon monoxide.

In the new approach, the researchers gasify biomass in the presence of precisely controlled amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, the main component of natural gas, in a special catalytic reactor that the researchers developed. When they did this, all of the carbon in both the biomass and the methane was converted to carbon monoxide. “In the chemical industry, even a few percent improvement makes a big impact. The increase from 50 percent to 100 percent is profound,” says Dionisios Vlachos, the director of the Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation at the University of Delaware.

To increase the yields from gasification, researchers at the University of Minnesota and UMass Amherst added carbon dioxide, which promotes a well-known reaction: the carbon dioxide combines with hydrogen to produce water and carbon monoxide. But adding carbon dioxide isn’t enough to convert all of the carbon in biomass into carbon monoxide instead of carbon dioxide. It’s also necessary to add hydrogen, which helps in part by providing the energy needed to drive the reactions. It’s long been possible to do each of these steps in separate chemical reactors. The researchers’ innovation was to find a way to combine all of these reactions in a single reactor, the key to making the process affordable.

Clean Technology, Consumers, Energy

The government is likely to increase oil prices by Rs 3-4 per litre on the back of hike in global oil prices from April 1, 2010. Sources said that at present, the average oil price in gulf market ranged between 77 to 78 dollars per barrel that accounted for Rs3 to Rs 3.15 per litre increase in oil prices in Pakistan. The government had increased petroleum products’ prices on February 1, 2010, with a substantial hike of Rs6.10 per litre in petrol price. But on March 1, it announced a nominal cut in oil prices ranging from Re0.64 to Rs2.56 per litre.

Consumers, Oil

Pakistan Ministry of Water and Power would provide electricity to around 100 villages through solar energy during this year as part of its programme to ensure light in every village of the country. Electrification through Renewable Energy Technologies in remote and off-grid villages of country is the prime focus of the government which has initiated projects not only to overcome power shortage but also to electrify the remotest parts, said an official at the Ministry.

The official said a project has already been approved to electrify 400 remote villages of Sindh and Balochistan through solar energy. Around 49 villages (3000 households) have been electrified in district Tharparker using solar energy through government own funds.

The funds for remaining work in Sindh and the projects in Balochistan are being negotiated with the donors and are expected to be initiated during this year. Moreover, 100 Solar Home Systems in three villages of district Dera Bugti, 119 Solar Home Systems in 10 villages of Deh Tiko Baran district Jamshoro, Sindh and 200 Solar Home Systems in 16 Villages of district Khuzdar, Balochistan are also being installed through which thousands of people would be facilitated.

The official said in view of the electricity crises in the country the government has given a serious thought to both short and long-term measures. Public sector hydro plants with generation capacity of 347 MW will be added to the system at a cost of US $500 million and 1,700 MW of high efficiency public sector thermal generation would start generation between end 2010 and upto 2012. The outlay for these projects is estimated as US $1.5 billion.

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Consumers, Electricity, Energy, Pakistan, Renewable Energy, Solar, power

Via TelecomPk.net

In 2008 I wrote about VNL and its efforts to create low power base stations. Here’s an update about their work which appeared at Technology Review.

An Indian telecom company is deploying simple cell phone base stations that need as little as 50 watts of solar-provided power. It will soon announce plans to sell the equipment in Africa, expanding cell phone access to new ranks of rural villagers who live far from electricity supplies.

Over the past year, VNL, based in Haryana, India, has reengineered the traditional technology of the dominant cellular standard, called GSM, in order to create base stations that only require between 50 and 150 watts of power, supplied by a solar-charged battery. The components can be assembled and booted up by two people and mounted on a rooftop in six hours.

One such station–dubbed a “village station”–can handle hundreds of users. Groups of such village stations feed signals to a required larger VNL base station within five kilometers. In turn that larger station, which is also solar-powered, relays signals to the main network. The village station can turn a profit even if customers spend on average only $2 a month on the service, instead of the $6 required to make traditional systems cost-effective, the company says.

“We’ve scaled down the cost, the energy, and the equipment so that almost anybody can deploy it,” says Rajiv Mehrotra, VNL’s CEO. “It lends itself to many business models that can serve the bottom of the pyramid,” a reference to the roughly 1.5 billion rural people who do not have access to electricity grids around the world.

To date, some 50 VNL base stations have been installed in the Indian state of Rajasthan, introducing thousands of people to cell phone service for the first time. An African rollout is imminent, the company says, without elaborating. The initial batch of 50 stations support voice and data transmission–but not initially text-messaging, a decision mainly based on the fact that many new users may not be able to read or write.

Besides enabling basic communication, cell phones can provide enormous financial opportunities for rural people, especially if those people adopt services that provide banking and lending via cell phone. More than half of India’s 1.1 billion people lack any access to basic financial services, and instead pay usurious rates to local loan sharks. Furthermore, while microlending can lift people from poverty, only about 150 million people worldwide use such services. Expanded cell networks, together with banking programs geared to the rural poor, could change all of that.

Clean Technology, Consumers, Innovation

Associate Press of Pakistan reports that the Japanese government has agreed to provide a grant of Yen 480,000,000 (US $5.4 million) to Pakistan for “Introduction of Clean Energy by Solar Electricity Generation System” programme. An agreement to this effect was signed here on Thursday by Secretary, Economic Affairs Division, Sibtain Fazal Halim and Ambassador of Japan in Pakistan, Chihiro Atsumi on behalf of their respective governments.

Among others, Head of Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA), also witnessed the signing ceremony. Under the Clean Energy Initiative, two on-grid solar power generation systems (100 KW each) will be installed under grant-aid through JICA, one at Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) and other at roof of Planning Commission’s building.

The project will promote clean energy utilisation and will help achieve emission reduction by installing the new system that would be connected to the national grid. The system is expected to reduce the gas emission, by replacing the part of electric power generated by fossil fuel and contribute to the climate change policy of Pakistan.

This project is first of its kind in the country, which would set precedent as a role model of defining procedures and strategy at the level for on-grid solar power generation. It is expected to become an effective measure to overcome the energy shortage and a motive for utilising solar power, for which there is big scope with relatively less investment.

On the occasion Chihiro Atsumi said that Japan was concerned about the challenges caused by the climate change in Pakistan which has been resulting in receding glaciers and lack of rain fall. During the Copenhagen conference held last month, Japan has committed to reduce the carbon emission, and Pakistan and Japan would try to utilise the solar energy to achieve this goal.

On the occasion, Secretary EAD said that Government of Japan has deep and diversified relations with Pakistan adding that Japan was the biggest donor partner of Pakistan and continued its support in education, health, energy, environment and disaster management.

Japan has also helped in capacity building and institution building in Pakistan, the Secretary added. Speaking on the occasion, Pakistan Engineering Council, Chairperson Rukhsana Zuberi expressed the hope that the launch of this project and the awareness created through media could lead to the solutions of energy problems. This system is economically viable and will also help in income generation, she added.

Clean Technology, Consumers, Energy, Investment, Solar Japan, JICA, Pakistan Engineering Council

There are some new techniques which help to tap into natural gas reserves but there is public concern about damage to environment. A mounting backlash against a technique used in natural-gas drilling is threatening to slow development of huge gas fields.

The U.S. energy industry says there is enough untapped domestic natural gas to last a century—but getting to that gas requires injecting millions of gallons of water into the ground to crack open the dense rocks holding the deposits. The process, known as hydraulic fracturing, has turned gas deposits in shale formations into an energy bonanza.

The industry’s success has triggered increasing debate over whether the drilling methods cause damage to the environment.

Today, the industry estimates that 90% of all new gas wells are fractured. Shale—a dense, nonporous gas-bearing rock—won’t release its gas unless it is cracked open, and other types of formations also produce more gas when fractured. Easier, more porous formations, which don’t require fracturing, were tapped in earlier decades and have largely dried up.

As the industry has honed its techniques, hydraulic-fracturing operations have become more complex, requiring far more water and chemicals—millions of gallons per well, rather than tens or hundreds of thousands of gallons in the past.

Environmentalists and some community activists fear hydraulic fracturing could contaminate drinking-water supplies. They point to recent incidents that they say are linked to fracturing, including a water-well explosion in Dimock, Pa., and a chemical spill here in Shreveport.

The industry says fracturing is safe and argues that there have been only a handful of incidents among the large number of wells that have been fractured over the past 50 years. “Hydraulic fracturing has been used since the 1940s in more than one million wells in the United States. It’s safe and effective,” says Exxon spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman.

Even if the industry can make its case, it still must deal with the public-relations and political fallout from some of the questionable incidents.

Via: Wall Street Journal

Consumers, Energy, Environment, Natural Gas

During the current winter season, traders are dispatching bulk of their import of generators to Punjab where power outages, spanning from 15 to 18 hours has pushed its sales to substantial level. The demand for generators in the retail and wholesale markets of Karachi have plunged to more than 70 to 75 percent during the last few months.

The traders attributed decline in demand to short duration of load shedding and declining purchasing power of city general consumers.

“Poor response by people of Karachi during the current winter season towards purchasing generators have spelled gloomy business prospects for the traders majority of which have turned their attention to Punjab to get rid of the stuck up stocks” Khurrum Saigal, president Pakistan Machinery Merchant Group (PMMG) said.

He said poor sales of all kinds of generators available in the market was reported by most of the traders ranging from one kv of Chinese origin Lifan to 2 kv of Meiji company.

Referring to the overwhelming response of Punjab market regarding boost in sales of generators, he said the positive business opportunities have compelled large number of Karachi traders to market and dispose of their products before end of the winter season thus enabling them to place new import orders before start of the next summer season.

Traders and importers claimed during corresponding period of previous year, generator sales in both retail and wholesale markets was encouraging as substantial number of buyers purchased different brands of generators.

The traders are facing bleak prospects at one of the largest wholesale generator market in country at Shahra e Liaquat Karachi as sales of imported generators from China, are preferring to sale their stuck up imported generators in the vast Punjab market, where prolonged load-shedding hours have turned lives of people miserable.

Consumers, Electricity

I came across this news about Electric scooters and thought that they would be great for Pakistan and India. Electric cars may grab headlines in international media, but in China electric scooters, bikes, and other two- and three-wheeled vehicles are big business, and could make a significant dent in the country’s emissions. VentureWire reports exclusively on a $9 million investment by Cybernaut (China) Investment in a Wuyi, China-based light vehicle and scooter manufacturer.

“It’s a segment that’s growing much faster than other electric vehicles,” Min Li, a Hong Kong-based analyst with Yuanta Securities, tells VentureWire. “This already is the first consumer adoption of the EV concept in China.”

Consumers, Electricity elecrtric scooters, transportation

Pakistan government has raised the petroleum oil products’ prices by an amount ranging from Rs 4.37 per litre to Rs 5.61 per litre in the country for the month of December 2009.

Accordingly Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority has notified new prices of various petroleum products including petrol, kerosene oil, Light-Diesel Oil (LDO) and HOBC here on Monday, while the oil marketing companies (OMCs) have released the increased price of high-speed diesel (HSD) as it is a deregulated product.

Consumers, Oil, Petrol