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Pakistan
Last Updated: August 2016
Overview
Map of Pakistan
- Over the past few years, Pakistan has experienced a major energy crisis as a result of expensive fuel sources, chronic natural gas and electricity shortages, circular debt, and insufficient transmission and distribution systems. According to the Asian Development Bank, prolonged power shortages cut GDP by 2-3% in 2013.
- Pakistan's government has recently prioritized resolving the energy crisis by proposing to boost domestic hydrocarbon production, increase natural gas imports, diversify the installed capacity portfolio of electricity generation, improve domestic energy efficiency standards, phase out natural gas subsidies, and resolve the circular debt issue in the energy industry. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), lower international oil prices and the recent government reforms have helped mitigate power blackouts and reduce circular debt.
- More than one-third of Pakistan's primary energy consumption is from biomass and waste since much of the population lacks access to reliable electricity and relies on traditional sources of energy in the residential sector. Roughly 58% of Pakistan's population uses biomass for cooking (about 105 million people) because of inadequate electricity and gas supply. Natural gas accounted for an estimated 30% of Pakistan's primary energy consumption in 2013, followed by petroleum and other liquids (26%), according to the International Energy Agency.
Oil
- Pakistan is a net importer of crude oil and refined products. Crude oil imports grew an annual 12% from 2014 to 2015, according to FACTS Global Energy.
- In 2015, the country produced 95,000 barrels per day (b/d) of total petroleum and other liquids, up from below 70,000 b/d before 2011. Most of the increase in oil production stems from additional discoveries and production of condensates from the Tal block. Oil exploration projects are ongoing and are expected to sustain production levels in the short term.
- Oil consumption has grown over time and averaged 431,000 b/d in 2015, far outpacing domestic production. Lower oil prices and natural gas shortages have contributed to increased oil consumption, particularly in the transportation and power sectors.
- Pakistan currently has six oil refineries, running mostly on imported crude oil, and a total crude oil distillation capacity of 390,000 b/d.
- Pakistan State Oil Company has announced its intention to build a new refinery that will process 200,000 to 250,000 b/d of crude oil. No timeline for completion has been given, as the project is still in its initial stage.
Natural gas
- The Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) dominates Pakistan's oil and natural gas industry. The Pakistani government owns a majority share in OGDCL, with the remainder owned by the public. BP and Eni are the leading foreign oil and gas firms operating in Pakistan. The leading gas distributors are Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) and Sui Northern Gas Pipelines (SNGP).
- Pakistan's natural gas production rose substantially in the early 2000s and reached a peak of 4.2 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per day in 2012. Since then, production has declined because of regulatory challenges, security concerns, and insufficient investment. According to a report by the Pakistani government, Pakistan faced a natural gas shortfall of roughly 730 Bcf/y, or one-third of its constrained gas demand, in 2015. Natural gas shortages have forced citizens to use firewood for heat, leading to vast deforestation issues.
- Pakistan holds sizeable shale gas reserves of 105 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), according to the EIA's Technically Recoverable Shale Oil and Shale Gas Resources report published in 2013, and the Pakistani government has provided investment incentives for shale gas development. However, companies face many challenges to develop such resources because of complex geography, environmental constraints, and low natural gas prices in Pakistan. Despite its substantial shale gas reserves, Pakistan's conventional natural gas reserves have declined over the past several years. Recent small natural gas discoveries have not been able to offset production declines.
- Several natural gas fields have been discovered in Pakistan since mid-2015 and are being further examined for viability, with no production timeline scheduled yet.
- Pakistan has historically lacked the infrastructure to import substantial amounts of natural gas, but the government plans to alleviate the natural gas shortage in the short term through gas imports. Pakistan commissioned its first regasification terminal, the Engro Elengy floating, storage, and regasification unit (FSRU), at Port Qasim, in 2015. In February 2016, Pakistan signed a 15-year deal to purchase 180 Bcf/y of natural gas from Qatar to supply the Engro Elengy terminal.
- A second LNG terminal at Port Qasim was approved in July 2016, with plans to supply an additional 220 Bcf/y by mid-2017. Additionally, Global Energy Infrastructure Limited (GEIL) proposed a third offshore terminal to come online by 2018. The company signed an agreement with Qatargas in 2016 to supply over 63 Bcf/y exclusively to Pakistan's private sector. There are proposals to develop two LNG terminals at Sonmiani Bay and at Gwadar, with the government aiming for completion in the next few years. However, the pace of development for these projects depends on the government resolving the power sector financial issues, addressing regulatory challenges, reducing gas theft and high levels of unaccounted for gas, and raising gas tariffs to alleviate financial losses by distribution companies.
- Pakistan is also involved in pipeline projects to import natural gas from neighboring countries. In December 2015, construction began on the Turkmen portion of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline, which would have an annual capacity of 1.2 Tcf/y. However, this pipeline is fraught with security risks and technical challenges.
- China has agreed to fund and build a portion of the natural gas pipeline that is intended to connect Iran to Pakistan. Iran has announced completion of its side of the pipeline, and the Pakistani side is scheduled for completion by 2018. Russia has also entered into an agreement with Pakistan to construct a pipeline that will connect LNG terminals in Lahore to those in Karachi. The first phase of the project is expected to be finished by the end of 2017.
Electricity
- Gross electricity generation in Pakistan increased gradually over the past decade from 90 billion kilowatthours (kWh) in 2005 to 110 billion kWh in 2015. Key sources of power production in 2015 were oil (35%), natural gas (29%), and hydroelectricity (30%), according to the Pakistani government. Nuclear generation made up 5%, and wind and imported electricity from Iran accounted for 1%. Natural gas supply shortages over the past several years have led to an increased share of oil use in power generation.
- Installed capacity reached 25 gigawatts (GW), increasing by about 5% from 2014 to 2015, primarily because of fossil fuel power plants additions. Despite the increase in total installed capacity, power plants have faced low utilization rates, mostly because of fuel shortages. As a result, according to the latest International Energy Agency estimates, less than 75% of the Pakistani population had access to electricity in 2013, with 50 million people without access to electricity.
- The electricity industry faces several problems including power generation theft, insufficient collection rates, line losses, high natural gas subsidies, the high cost of furnace oil used in place of natural gas, insufficient natural gas supply, and an older transmission network. These problems have resulted in the poor financial position of generation companies and infrastructure bottlenecks, leading to widespread power shortages. However, according to Pakistan's Ministry of Water and Power, unscheduled power outages, along with transmission and distribution losses, decreased considerably in 2015, while lower oil prices helped reduce financial losses.
- High subsidies of electricity prices have also kept the Pakistani government trapped in a system of circular debt. However, according to the IMF, the Pakistani government has made progress towards reducing subsidies and circular debt over the past year.
- In 2015, Pakistan and China entered into the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) agreement, which could help Pakistan decrease costs of electricity generation and alleviate electricity shortages by 2020. The agreement includes $34 billion of investment from China to be used for developing energy infrastructure, including more than 10,400 MW of power plant capacity from coal and renewable energy.
- The Pakistani government intends to add new coal power plants to diversify its fuel mix for electricity generation over the next few years. Current proposals include over 7 GW of new coal-fired capacity.
Project Feedback
Read what others are saying about this project.
12/01/2016 - Italy
First of all, congrats for this huge and helpful dataset!Secondly, how can I recover the data for Biodiesel production and see them in the chart/table? The Source button seem not to do any changes.. Thanks a lot again
11/28/2016 - Colombia
It would be easier, if when using metric units, instead of writing "billion kWh" you would specify whether this is 10^9 (as in english speaking countries) or 10^12 (everywhere else). Am I correct to assume 1 billion kW equal 1 GW?
11/19/2016 - Missouri, United States
International energy - consumption per capita years 2010 and 2011 seem wildly out of line with the previous years. US goes for 308 to 69,595 in 2010? Seems incorrect
11/11/2016 - Indiana, United States
I very much liked the previous version where excel downloaded data was much easier to work with. With this new version and the way it generates excel files when we download data, it takes me a huge amount of time to effectively use a downloaded file.
11/11/2016 - Virginia, United States
Per capita consumption data for 2011 by continent is coming up strangely. For global consumption of 529 Quad BTUs, it's showing per capita 9.5 trillion BTUs (which would assume a world pop. ~56,000).
11/02/2016 - India
Hi, great work with the interface. However, there are parts of the database that we could access in the previous version, that we are unable to access here (Imports and exports of petroleum crude and products, consumption of renewable energy in QTBTU among others). It would be great if these issues were cleared up asap so as to improve usability and access to data. Thank you!
10/24/2016 - India
Hi, We are unable to download crude oil and refined petroleum products imports by country. Kindly help.
10/13/2016 - Iran
Can you please create new links for your new things? I just saved a link for total renewable electricity net consumption, every time I just use this link address, but this time because of your update, it was not found. It makes me confused, I need this data in excel format, I search all of your website, I did not find this variable data/
10/11/2016 - New York, United States
The old system to download data was much easier - why fix something that worked well. I saw a comment that person can download all countries - I can not find that. Can you please direct me to it - thanks
10/01/2016 - Texas, United States
I'm just curious why the data period ends at 2013 - it's now Oct 2016 - seems like there should be data at least thru 2015. Has the beta site been replaced? Am I just in the wrong place?
09/28/2016 - Japan
I'm using the data for elec. generation (e.g. PV or wind) for my own research. Before this version, the data were down to 3 to 4 decimal places. However, only 1 decimal seems to be shown in Beta. It would be more useful and helpful for research if some options for more decimal place were added or units could be modified (e.g. other than billion kWh for generation). Thanks.
09/13/2016 - Norway
Hi, this gives me a very interesting picture of the global energy sector. Thank you.
08/29/2016 - Texas, United States
The organization of downloaded CSV data makes the data almost unusable. All headers for each country are shown as having equal value to the country itself so the data cannot be sorted without losing the country identification. I downloaded All Countries>Crude Oil and Lease Condensate Production. Column B makes every heading equal i.e., the country and various information headings. It is unfortunate that a download cannot be directly used but it is frustrating that as an expert Excel user I cannot easily determine a way to organize the data in a way that makes it usable. Thanks, Art Berman
08/16/2016 - Texas, United States
Really helpful and easy to use.
08/12/2016 - United Kingdom
Excellent. This is much easier to navigate and use.
07/27/2016 - Brazil
Excelent job! What does the "other liquids" in Total Petroleum and Other Liquids Production 2015 include?
07/18/2016 - India
Very useful data. However, it would be great if you could mention how much of India's energy (especially oil and gas) imports come by sea, in order to get a clearer picture of India's energy imports.
06/23/2016 - United Kingdom
I was using your import figures for china i.e. the pie chart for percentage world wide imports 2014 and when added up it is 99% rather than 100.
06/22/2016 - Japan
More new information will be helpful to understand global enegy situation.
06/15/2016 - Ecuador
Srs, I am probably one of the thousands readers that are eager to learn of the new information produced by EIA. Excellent, by the way. OPEC report on revenue is very informative. Our governments always keep us in the dark. Why???. Thank you
06/07/2016 - United Kingdom
Amazing data, thank you very much!
05/25/2016 - China
Very helpful information!! Well researched, clear figures and graphs.
05/18/2016 - California, United States
There is no data available for the petroleum or natural gas reserves in the U.S.A.
05/01/2016 - Australia
It is incredibly frustrating trying to view the data you want. Today I simply want to view the imports of crude oil in bbld in South Africa. BTU is a completely unhelpful metric.
04/22/2016 - California, United States
2014?? Where are the production numbers of 2015 and up 4/22/16?
04/03/2016 - United Kingdom
Fantastic resource. Very well researched, clear and easy figures and graphs. Well organised too. Incredible useful!
03/08/2016 - District of Columbia, United States
What a handy tool, thanks!
03/06/2016 - New Jersey, United States
Well organized information with easy access.
02/15/2016 - West Virginia, United States
Very helpful information!
02/14/2016 - China
I like the old version which had a country brief.
02/09/2016 - Saudi Arabia
Excellent work for the country analysis. However, i'm struggling to cite the South African country analysis report....would appreciate if you could sent it
01/30/2016 - Spain
Your website is very useful for me as a teacher, particularly the world thematic maps. My students like it as well. Thanks a lot!
01/22/2016 - Vietnam
Useful data for my work. Thanks sincerely.
01/04/2016 - Canada
Best government website ever
01/02/2016 - Turkey
Goood
12/29/2015 - Michigan, United States
We use your 'Total Electricity Net Consumption' data for comparing countries for a market potential index we create each year. Data in the previous years was available up to 5 decimal places. However, data is available with only 1 decimal place this year (through the beta interface) and comparing countries became a challenge because there are too many countries with the same values now. Is there a way to download the full data-set with all the decimal points available?
12/22/2015 - United Kingdom
Brilliant bit of website, made my life a thousand times easier!
12/06/2015 - Argentina
Excellent!!
11/29/2015 - Malaysia
May I know if there is a latest write up on Malaysia year 2015. The one I have obtained is 2014.
11/21/2015 - Virginia, United States
Terrific article on Brazil...thank you.
11/20/2015 - Egypt
I note that the analysis of energy in Israel in this site is not covered in details as other countries?
11/17/2015 - Michigan, United States
Great PDF file on Canada's energy and trade success! Exactly what I needed to bring me up to speed for my research on Michigan and on the Midwest - thanks! (Mike at McGuire Research)
11/15/2015 - California, United States
Why are your maps so hard to copy and past? It should be easy to get a nice graph of yours.
11/12/2015 - Alabama, United States
I work with Excel spreadsheets. I looked at your Excel download function and examined your Excel spreadsheet. It appears that if I am going to load the data into my spreadsheets, I will have to do one line at a time, each country individualy.
10/06/2015 - United Kingdom
The analysis on South Korea was a very interesting and worthwhile read. Great to see such an informed analysis presented with tables to illustrate it
09/30/2015 - France
Excellent interface, very very efficient. Having global data is definitely a plus. Too bad data goes up to 2012 and does not include 2013 and 2014. Comments coming from an IT manager used to major systems with large databases.
09/12/2015 - India
I always rely on data published by EIA to make various comparisons and analysis reports. This tool makes my job much easier.
09/11/2015 - Russia
Amazing tool, thank you for such a useful application for data export .
08/16/2015 - Colorado, United States
So... Pretty! Really appreciate you guys going the extra mile with your data tools, this makes my research so much more effective. You guys have been an utter joy to work with (not a typical experience for government bureaucracy), and this new beta is the icing on the cake. Thanks for the hard work you have put in to make this information clear and understandable! Looking forward to seeing what you guys cook up in the future.
06/09/2015 - District of Columbia, United States
Why can't I download any of this to spreadsheets? Why can't I download multiple years?
06/01/2015 - Nigeria
Dear Sirs, I have been using your data for almost 20 yrs, in particular the international Petroleum data. I like the granularity provided, by country by month. Unfortunately it seems from the beta site, that I can only access the annual data and only download as a CSV file. Is that correct? regards Casper
05/31/2015 - Virginia, United States
Where are the country pages!!!? I am writing a book chapter and referenced your site, where I found terrific info on India and Japan several months ago. Unfortunately, it appears you deleted those pages. Why?
05/27/2015 - Antarctica
I really love this beautiful webpage! It is very wonderful:) I love learning about this stuff!
05/25/2015 -
I need to access country profiles in .pdf form.
05/20/2015 - New York, United States
Thank you for all the info and help over the past few years. Before the layout, I was able to find annual #s of net exports of petro for each country, and now I have no idea where it is.
05/20/2015 - New York, United States
I am looking for bbl and bcf , not Btu , can you tell me where to look for country's oil bbl and gas in bcf? Thanks
05/20/2015 - Canada
Where can I find the original spreadsheets with the country data for Crude + Condensate and the one for all liquids. The new look is too complicated for me. The spreadsheet is more easily used for good analysis.
05/19/2015 - Texas, United States
Would like a link to the pdf of the entire country analysis brief.