Abstract:
Pakistan, like many other developing countries, is experiencing acute energy crisis due to a continual and ever-increasing mismatch between supply and demand. Political disputes, rapidly growing population, insecurity and mismanagement of energy resources in the past has resulted in a large gap between supply and demand of energy in the country. Meeting the energy requirements of the country in the future would become even more severe with an intermittent nature and excessive consumption of resources in the current energy mix. This work offers a quantitative and analytical approach to the current natural gas situation of Pakistan. The work also gives priority to the usage of energy models in order to cater the gap between supply and demand by forecasting. This situation calls for a better and proper forecasting of existing energy resources, which is deeply necessary for more accurate planning and policy formulation in the energy sector. With respect to the economic and energy constraints in the country, this work highlights the subsequent energy demand and supply in terms of natural gas forecast using Pakistan integrated energy model (Pak-IEM) based on the TIMES model. Under the given circumstances, the model PAK-IEM was also updated as per 2014 statistics. Along with the forecast of natural gas, various policies and their key components were also evaluated. The implementation of multi-criteria policies has also been analyzed, which are very significant to integrated energy planning of the country. Using the multi-criteria policy approach, the management of the natural gas would be very helpful in order to capture the complexity between supply and demand. Finally, the overall cost of the energy sector with respect to various scenarios has also been studied. The following research work features the importance of implying an array of different demand scenarios in order to minimize the gap between supply and demand. This approach will equip decision-makers to formulate effective policies to meet the ever-rising demand for natural gas.
