Tawanai

After many years of discussions, politics and negotiations Pakistan and Iran signed the gas pipeline deal last month. To see a historical perspective, see the below image from 2005. India is no longer part of the deal. Also note the US reaction, via Dawn.

Construction on the pipeline should begin this year and be operational by 2014, said Abdul Basit, a foreign ministry spokesman.

Iran and Pakistan signed an initial pact in June last year and reached agreement on pricing in September. Under the terms of the final deal signed Tuesday, Iran will supply 750 million cubic feet a day of gas to Pakistan for 25 years.

The pipeline has been on the drawing board since the mid-1990s, when Iran and India signed a deal to transport gas through Pakistan. Dubbed the “Peace Pipeline” because of hopes it would lead to a détente between rivals India and Pakistan, the $7 billion, 2,700-kilometer pipeline project was stalled as the two nations almost went to war in 2001.

India dropped out last year amid continued security concerns in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, home to a militant Islamist separatist movement, and over disagreements between the parties on pricing.

The scaled-down project could still face further delays. Militants blew up another gas pipeline in Baluchistan in August, highlighting the difficulties Pakistan’s government faces in operating in the poor but resource-rich province. Some details of the Iran-Pakistan pipeline also remain unclear, including how much it will cost and how the countries will finance the project given U.S. opposition.

Gas, Infrastructure, Investment, Natural Gas

So now generators are going to be the big gift! Here’s one which boosts that it has cng kit installed and it will work for your fans, lights and TV.

Energy, Generator

The government has decided to change the privatisation model for power companies into management contracts, leasing and equity injection through initial public offerings to avoid creation of private monopolies like the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC).

“Privatisation without competition is bound to create monopoly in private sector as happened in case of KESC. Its outright sale could not meet the stakeholders’ expectations, rather it has been a nightmare for customers,” said a senior water and power ministry official while justifying the need to review the privatisation approach.

The sale of KESC, he said, had achieved none of its objectives and consumer satisfaction was by no means better than in 2004 when such a huge enterprise was sold. The government has to provide even higher subsidies and special treatment to the KESC now than six years ago.

As a result of shoddy work relating to privatisation of power companies over the past two decades, the creation of a competitive electricity market has remained a dream for which the much publicised corporatisation and unbundling of Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) had been taken in hand about 20 years ago.

Consumers as well as the national economy have not been able to get the promised benefits of power sector reforms despite the creation of a large organisation like the Pakistan Electric Power Company, separation of the hydel wing of Wapda from power companies, injection of billions of dollars of foreign loans and more than eight times’ increase in electricity tariffs.

The official said the government was working on at least 10 models for improving the state-owned power sector -– generation, transmission and distribution companies – keeping in view peculiarities of companies in different regions for ensuring their long-term solvency. He said the new approach had been necessitated by the fact that the Faisalabad Electric Supply Company that had been on the privatisation list for decades and was among the best performing companies in the region had not been able to attract a real investor because the margin for improvement was very limited.

The new models for larger companies would include issuance of initial public offerings of power companies with the involvement of international underwriters to attract local and foreign investment. The smaller companies or single project based entities would be leased out for 10 to 15 years, extendable by another 5 to 10 years.

Likewise, some of the companies would also be considered for public-private partnership or management contracts with specific targets and guarantees. The government will also design new financing contracts for improvement of cash flows of these companies and will include Lease-Build-Operate (LBO), Build-Transfer-Operate (BT or BTO), Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOT or BOOT), Buy-Build-Operate (BBO) and Buy-Own-Operate (BOO).

Via Dawn

Energy

From See n Report.

Energy

• Cloud Computing and its Contribution to Climate Change: This report from Greenpeace: http://bit.ly/c4PwHZ #green (via @GreenEnergyNews) #

Energy Energy

• Don't forget about #EarthHour tonight. Follow @EarthHour for video & info. 8:30 in your timezone. (via @TreeHugger) #
• The Economist's Conservative, Level-Headed Take on Climate Science http://bit.ly/bih3fs (via @TreeHugger) #
• Mitsubishi Motors to triple electric car output › Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion http://bit.ly/aiVW4v (via @greenbubble) #

Energy Energy

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

The World Bank will provide $250 million for ‘Natural Gas Production Enhancement and Efficiency Project’ to increase availability and affordability of electricity by improving access to natural gas fuel for power generation through gas sector efficiency enhancements.

According to an updated project report of World Bank, the proposed project would comprise design and implementation of energy sector policy, regulatory, institutional and investment measures to reduce unaccounted-for gas (UFG) from the current level of about 8 percent to closer to international norms (around 1 percent), which would involve: (a) pipeline replacement to eliminate leakages and reduce technical losses; and (b) modernised metering and control systems. The investment component may approximately cut UFG in half, or better, depending on the project’s impact on gas theft.

It would reduce residential consumers’ gas consumption through pilot projects to replace old gas appliances (space heating and/or hot water) that have low efficiency (20-30 percent) with modern, efficient appliances (efficiency 50-70 percent), the report said.

To address the thermal efficiency issue concerning appliances in a broad way with impact beyond the pilot, it would design a gas usage optimisation strategy based on a combination of national priorities and economic costs and benefits, implementation efficiency, and conservation measures. It would enhance institutional capacity in petroleum sector governance, including the regulatory authority (Ogra).

Energy, Investment, Natural Gas, Pakistan

Division of natural resources has been a controversial issue for a long time in Pakistan. Recently, members of Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Reforms have agreed to a joint share of Federation and Provinces in the natural resources ie, lands, minerals and other things of value within the continental shelf or underlying the ocean within the territorial waters of Pakistan, according to sources.

Text of Article 172 (2) :

“(2) All lands, minerals and other things of value within the continental shelf or underlying the ocean within the territorial waters of Pakistan shall vest in the Federal Government.”

The sources said that after the addition of a new clause, any province will have joint territorial ownership of the ocean within 12 nautical miles limit of its jurisdiction with federation. The committee also decided the Federation could not install any hydel project for power generation without the consultation of the concerned province.

According to sources, Council of Common Interests (CCI) would take decisions on all matters relating to provincial autonomy in Federal Legislative List part-II in future. The members of the Committee strongly recommended strengthening of the CCI to resolve all the matters of Federal Legislative List part-II and disputes among the provinces and federation.

The sources said that Committee Chairman Mina Raza Rabbani is taking up first those matters on which the parties have fewer differences. Clauses that have attracted strong reservations of the provinces would be taken up by the committee later. The committee is discussing clause by clause Federal Legislative List for the last four days. The sources said that there are differences among the nationalist and mainstream political parties on Articles-21, 29, 32, 34,49 and 53 of Federal Legislative List Part-I.

Economics, Energy, Pakistan politics, provinces