PAKISTAN is one of those countries which depend heavily on oil and natural gas for generating electricity. With the exception of two small nuclear stations, l thermal power plants are running on natural gas and as everybody knows, the reserves of these fuels will not last more than a few decades. So, increasing the dependence on these fuels, especially gas, will simply increase the country’s problems. Signs are already there showing in the form of increasing international oil prices.

Gas is also used for domestic cooking and heating which makes a major share of its total consumption while gas distribution network for domestic purposes is being enlarged day by day. The pressure of gas in houses decreases during the winter. To overcome this problem, gas load shedding is being done for many years by cutting or reducing gas supply to power houses and maintaining supply to domestic consumers. Meanwhile, we are also trying to import gas from Iran or from some other Central Asian country.

Natural gas is a very precious thing, consisting mostly of methane gas, a basic organic compound, and is used for making many valuable items such as medicines, drugs and other precious chemicals. Thus the potential of value addition in this case is very high. Gas worth $1 which is being used for burning as fuel can be value-added to $100 or even more. So, burning natural gas amounts to burning currency notes. And installation of more electricity generating stations using gas as the fuel cannot be a wise step.

What then Pakistan should do? In many countries, including the industrialised ones, having huge reserves of coal, a major portion of their electrical demand is still met by burning coal. For example, Britain is still generating 32 per cent of electrical energy by using 86 per cent of total coal production. With the decline in the local production of coal, the UK also imports coal for power generation. The country also has huge reserves of coal but it is surprising that it has never given any importance to this abundantly available fuel.

The main excuse for not to using coal is that it is of inferior quality and contains sulphur which on burning can increase air pollution. This excuse has no depth while the fact remains that the use of coal is being avoided on the advice of those who never want Pakistan to prosper. Methods to reduce air pollution have been devised and with the proper selection of burning process, no pollution problem can arise.

Planners in Pakistan do not seem to have visualised as to what will happen when oil and gas reserves will end totally. May be that they have in mind to start burning the wood or coal for cooking once again as we have been doing earlier.

If at all we have to burn coal in future for domestic purposes, then we have to keep it mind that if burning coal increases air pollution now, it will also do so in future as well. So, the best thing to do is to generate electricity from this fuel with a process controlling the air pollution rather than allow the domestic consumers to burn it without any pollution control.

PROF DR MOHAMMAD MUNIR HASAN,
Karachi