Post 18th constitutional amendment, interpretational uncertainty especially relating to Section 172 made in April 2010, triggered the cancellation of the new exploration block award process, which was scheduled to take place on 30th June 2010.

Unfortunately, the energy supply situation has gone from bad to worse as my timely sensitisation effort fell on deaf ears during the last 12 years. The contextual environment surrounding the country today has severely hampered the country’s ability to secure energy supplies from external sources.

It has become a routine performance of a balancing act to balance what is available and what can be afforded. The recent start of intermittent gas supply to the domestic sector three times a day during meal times, and non-purchase of RLNG, when the gap between supply and demand is ever widening, depicts a situation that is even below the sustenance level.

With the formation of the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), a ray of hope has emerged. Knowing that none of the policies introduced by successive governments in the past have succeeded, the time has come to take critical stock of the situation and restart by creating a self-sustaining, efficient, and economical organisational fit.

The SIFC’s first action should be to appoint only one minister, state minister and federal secretary to steer the Ministry of Energy for both power and petroleum divisions and create an IT-based, truly integrated energy plan

For SIFC, the first action should be to appoint only one minister, state minister and federal secretary to steer the Ministry of Energy (both power and petroleum divisions), which should start by creating an IT-based, truly integrated energy plan and its implementation with effective checks and balances.

Simultaneously, a university of energy technologies should be created by merging all currently available training/research centres of the Pakistan Water and Power Development Authority, Oil & Gas Development Company Ltd, Hydrocarbon Development Institute of Pakistan, and other relevant institutions and combining their assets and resources.

Such a university should be a centre of excellence and act as an interface between the academic, emerging technologies, and market needs, and develop technologies and professionals in all disciplines to manage and develop/acquire energies to achieve security of energy supplies.

Development of hydrogen fuel, wireless transmission of electric power (smart grids), satellite transmission of solar power direct from the sun to the earth round the clock and other such technologies have already been invented elsewhere but are alien to Pakistan’s energy market.

The creation of an independent Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Upra) is a must to bring efficiency to the day-to-day decision-making process. This is again a consolidation exercise whereby all the director generals currently working under Petroleum Division (policy wing) should be merged and placed under a new chairman of Upra so that efficiency could be brought into the domestic exploration & production (E&P) activity, which will eliminate the time taken in seeking the federal government’s approval even on operational matters.

Extensive use of advanced technologies for developing an integrated energy plan, its effective regulatory oversight and management of the supply chain especially relating to petroleum products, liquefied petroleum gas, liquefied natural gas etc, is a must.

Creation of a natural gas transmission company and its declaration as a strategic asset, establishment of a new import oil terminal at Gwadar, provision of security protection to E&P companies in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as provided to China Pakistan Economic Corridor projects, aggressively pursuance of Iran-Pakistan-India and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline projects, a “big push” to accelerate exploration in Pakistan to increase domestic oil/gas production, and the creation of strategic storage are some of the initiatives that the SIFC need to take up on priority relating to the energy industry.

The existing institutions should be allowed to continue functioning, and they may be provided only the highest level of support for strategic projects.

An appropriate organisational fit needs to be created for the policy, administrative and regulatory functions relating to the energy industry. A new integrated energy plan has to be objectively chalked out, where prioritisation is meticulously planned and where the focus is placed in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term accordingly.

The country needs to be able to produce and secure various energies and rejuvenate the economy within five years to meet minimum demand and then start focusing on the security of energy supplies on a long-term sustainable basis.

The writer is a former member of the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, August 7th, 2023