Shale gas solution?
THE shale gas revolution is upending global energy, and could hold the promise of alleviating South Asia’s energy woes. But so mired is the region in strife, scams and vested interests, that it is letting a wondrous gift slip by.
A few years ago, George Mitchell of America came up with a technology called fracking to extract natural gas from shale, a sedimentary rock. Natural gas from shale is called shale gas, and is just another form of natural gas. Both Pakistan and India have solid reserves of shale gas, but have not begun exploiting them.
The US has taken the lead in extracting its vast deposits of shale gas, making global natural gas prices plummet from $8 for a unit of gas in 2008 to around $2 today. And many other countries too are richly endowed in shale, so natural gas could stay cheap and plentiful for decades.
Natural gas has two principal uses, one in power generation, the other in transportation. Generation is how the West uses it primarily. As for transportation, Pakistan has the most vehicles in the world powered by CNG, around 2.5 million. India lags with just over a million CNG vehicles. Suffice it to say that the conveyance is field-proven. And the fuelling infrastructure is also in place. Importing shale gas, which can be compressed like any other natural gas, would substantially lower local CNG prices.The ungainly tank that cramps boot space also inhibits mass-scale adoption of CNG vehicles. South Asia, and India in particular, is a large car market, one of the fastest growing in the world. Cars across the region tend to be similar. Manufacturers can certainly be persuaded to offer comfortable and elegant CNG cars. Were South Asia to make a concerted jump to CNG, petrol’s influence would drastically reduce.
Brazil uniquely has converted its road transport to an alternative fuel, ethanol derived from sugarcane. South Asia has plentiful supplies of the plant, and could easily have emulated Brazil but general apathy, and quite possibly an aversion to copying another Third World country led to missing the ethanol bus.
CNG vehicles are not popular in the West, but that does not make them infra dig. The West has inextricably tied itself to petrol, with the maxim, ‘cheap oil, forever, whatever the cost’. Now that the belief is getting busted, enormous investments are being made in electric vehicles, but these are expensive and unsafe. They are also being introduced in South Asia, where surely the elite will snap them up, if only because of the cool factor.
On to generation. In South Asia, if petrol does not get you, then loadshedding surely will. A strong lobby urges that both India and Pakistan focus on coal-fired generation. But of all available options, coal power plants pollute the most, and risk becoming stranded investments in any upcoming global climate mandate. Natural gas offers a via media because it causes only half the pollution of coal. In the US, natural gas has been steadily squeezing coal as a power fuel. In a recent study, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has qualifiedly approved shale gas as a strong bridge to a low-carbon future.
More significantly, the European Union, where climate consciousness is acute, has rebranded natural gas as a clean, low-carbon resource, on par with renewables and nuclear energy. It even considers shale gas exploration safe enough to forego imposing new regulations on it.
Post-Fukushima, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and others are either phasing out nuclear energy altogether, or severely curtailing it. Even as the world turns away from nuclear, India is sticking to its guns.
Three years into India’s nuclear deal with the US, the two are mired over liability disputes. If nuclear plants are so safe, then why the ruckus? Undeterred by liability, the French and the Russians have embarked upon building reactors in India, in the teeth of fierce local opposition. How ironical that France wants to construct nuclear plants as long as they are not in its own backyard!
Pakistan appears keen on the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline, but that will deliver expensive, conventional natural gas, not cost-effective shale gas. India is dabbling with renewables like solar and wind, which are unreliable and costly, and whose effective use is still many years away, as even acknowledged by the aforementioned MIT study.
Finally, both Pakistan and India have substantial shale deposits to mine. The public sector has traditionally extracted oil and gas in South Asia, with mixed results. The private sector should be allowed into shale exploration, just as in the US, where shale gas has created half a dozen new billionaires, and over half a million jobs, all in the last few years. The technology itself is not hard to acquire. Exploration rights of course need to be allotted transparently.
The builders of newly independent Pakistan and India started with little but honesty and idealism. They did not hesitate to borrow ideas or resources from abroad. Electricity infrastructure, roads, airlines, universities, in fact model cities like Islamabad and Chandigarh were all created in a short span. Until the mid-1960s, the region’s development was hailed worldwide.
Somewhere then the rot set in. Today, even a flyover built by the government is acclaimed. Current leaders claim credit for their predecessors’ spadework, whereas mostly their hands are in the cookie jar. Infrastructural development has ground to a halt. In case any occurs, as in mobile telephony, it is in spite of the government, not because of it. Shale gas represents an opportunity for South Asia to kill two birds, power and fuel woes, with one stone. To grab or squander is up to our leaders.
The writer is the founder of an energy firm.
The Shale Gas Secret is a Solution and Revolution in coming years..
The writer says the electric vehicles are unsafe but hasn't explained how! Also the writer follows this by saying that the elite in South Asia with snap such (electric) vehicles…but if they are unsafe why would the elite and the rich will ever think of buying them as they can afford safer vehicles even if they are more expensive…
Coal-Bed Methane is an easier and more feasible option for Pakistan. Even if our coal reserves are of poorer quality, associated coal-bed methane should be explored. As the saying goes however (for thsoe who know Urdu) "billi kay galay main ghanti bandhay ga kaun". Our "leaders" are making merry, most of our industrialists are risk averse, and capital is sparse. If we could solve these fundamental issues, the rest would be a piece of cake (almost) !!
Rate at the consumption of fossle fuel being consumed today not been produced at as resourse in ground, a tiny drops of hydro carbon need to origin may take more than1000s of years, looking at today seniario of consumption world may exhaust with anothor 40years more with hydrocarbon, as cheap as feasable similar energy resourses to be identified in global leavel, if our generation want to sustain, also for enviornment protection. I am not scientiest, still I put the comment as water as a good sourse of energy H2O, as amount of Hydrogen with good caloric value and waste as oxiygen withe with friendly to nature, why dont be our scientfic culture to work on.(however we are aware the explosive nature of H2).
India's Reliance has invested billions of dollars in shale gas fields in the US and has not seen any return from them. With low gas prices, it as decided not to invest in shale gas further. The author does not understand the economics of shale gas today. It is highly capital intensive as of now and does not give any profit to the investor. There is no need for co operation between countries as they can go on their own.India Pakistan relations need not be linked in everything.
My understanding from press reports is that Reliance had bought 40% of Atlas Energy, a s shale gas developer in the U.S., and then Chevron bought the remaining 60% of Atlas Energy, a development that Reliance tried to forestall as it wanted a controlling stale in Atlas Energy.
The article does not sat that India and Pakistan should cooperate in shale gas development. It says that bought of them can benefit from this resource. The only place where it alludes to some kind of cooperation is CNG vehicles, but there too both countries are large-enough car markets that if one country decided to make a concerted jump to CNG vehicles, it can make car manufacturers offer better CNG cars.
Fracking causes havoc to the environment and tends to pollute the water table as well
While the writer brings up positives selectively to substantiate his point, he has also failed to underscore the concerns which have prompted the EU to ban fracking in almost all its member countries
Shale gas has been explored in Pakistan by no less than ENI and is not cheap by any standard, it will be above the IPI gas pipeline. Plus many us states have started to ban Fracking, the release of the gas is uncontrolled and i dont think as poor as we are we will ignore gas in our water supply and kitchens exploding in houses. We have not developed our coal or our gold / copper, why do we keep looking for the next shiny magic bullet. Lets optimise what we have than moving on to the next big thing.
Please note that the author is the founder of an energy firm and i can safely bet that this firm deals with shale gas.
The process of fracking (which is hydraulic fracturing by injecting chemicals into the ground) has notorious history. Not only the groundwater is contaminated but the gas also escapes to unintentional places and has appeared in taps in the kitchens of people living nearby. Since the gas is basically methane (though with less calorific values and that is why its is also sometimes called the 'girly' gas) has the potential for creating explosive environments within the populated areas.
In Indo-Pak where we rely on groundwater from agriculture to drinking, it will be extremely dangerous to mine the shale gas without proper environmental assessment and its impact on the masses that live in the region. There is no point in providing energy to poisoned people.
Cost of gas has declined after 2010 since US started shale gas exploration – the prices of natural gas has declined. – However the issue with natural gas adoption has been its volatility .How much of this delcine has occured due to shale gas vs natural cycle of gas prices is open to question
All of the above notwithstanding , shale gas is an important alternative , and if the resources in this region are qualified and commercially extractable , they should be a part of our overall energy security
" Rich people would buy electric cars ergo, poor dont have an electric option . The author conveniently forgets that emerging technologies tend to expensive but gradually become more affordable.Prices of electric cars has declined substantially. Maybe the author conveniently forgot that REVA retails in India for Rs 400,000 which, while not the cheapest is clearly not unaffordable.
"
The article while well written has made liberal travesties with truth .Let me elaborate
"Electric vehicles are unsafe"- Really ?? We have had many instances of CNG vehicles on fire due to incorrect installation of tanks . In electric cars , the risk simply does not arise.
The lithium-ion battery of the Chevy Volt electric car in the U.S. has caught fire a number of times in government testing. My article does say that CNG cars need a better design. There are millions more CNG vehicles on the road than lithium-ion electric cars, and they are thus much more field-proven than the latter.
Pakistan's scientists will be right on top of fracking technology, but where will the money come from to create this industry in Pakistan?
This technology is the future. Burning furnace oil is an absurdity in the power industry.
There are two different technologies in our nuclear industries. The Russians and the French use the most dangerous type – the breeder reactor. It produces plutonium (it's own fuel) as a bi product.
If there is a sudden cooling problem the reactor core will melt down so fast it will breech the reactor and reach underground water. The operation of these reactors must be monitored with great care, and shut down for inspection and cooling system maintenance on periodically and on regular schedules. Safety must be 100%.
Japan was not operating breeder reactors but an earthquake finished some of them, cracking their cores.
nice read.. i believe that Pakistan and India have a lot of natural resources but the only thing missing is the WILL to explore them.. We hope that future will be different for these two and the general masses will see some relief in their energy needs..
Thank you for a positive eye opening post. I hope leaders in both countries will seriously take note of this source of energy.
Thanks for concentrating on a very important topic! Is there any estimate of the potential of shale gas in Pakistan & India?
I wish writer had described shale and its deposits in pakistan in greater detail. The process of obtaining gas from shale also needs to be brifly described.
It is beyond doubt that the future for S.Asia lies in investing in cheaper and renewable energy resources .Nuclear energy is being phased out in most of the Developed world because of hazards of radiation.
India and Pakistan should start collaborating in finding cheaper sources of energy since power is a major constraint in both countries. Scientists from both sides should exchange know-how in solar, wind,hydel.bio-gas and other non-conventional sources of energy. R&D in energy should be encouraged by both countries.
Energy efficient designing of Buildings,vehicles and conservation of energy systems should be a priority area. Fossil fuels should be phased out gradually as they are a big drain on our foreign exchange and also increase carbon -emissions.
If we could get our priorities right we could collaborate in various fields to benifit both countries. Shale in Pakistan is in the south and west, there is no danger there in fracking as most of it is desert. Balochistan, where SUi Gas has been pumped for the past 56 years is sparsely populated. North western Punjab has the potential also. I say go for it. The problem is investment. These things can be worked out as India and Pakistan both need sustained engery to make rapid progress. We cannot just sit on our hands, every new technology has its challenges. Nuclear, radiation, coal particulate pollution, Hydro power silting damage to the river's eco system, so it has to be done at a cost.
the way current Congress govenment is sitting on reforms could only mean one thing. It is trying to spite the economy till Indians cry out for the "Prince" ( read mr. Gandhi version 5.0) to save them from the economic debacle. It is a shame how the two hereditary parties ( PPP in Pakistan and Congress in India) have let their respective countries down and swindled millions for personal and political profit.
Hi Sunil,
Yes Shale gas and oil is an opportunity, BUT, there concerns about contamination of ground water with fracking chemicals have been a concern in the US, and not been addressed. I do not argue that we close our eyes to Shale gas/oil, but that we cannot also ignore potential impacts on ground water. Can South Asia risk contaminating our ground water ?