Sind has many gas producing structures albeit most of them small. On the top of my head I can name Zamzama, Kandwari, sawan, Hala, Mazarni. Qadirpur, Hudi, Sari, Miana, Chachran, Norai Jagir, Kunnar etc. All the fields except Qadirpur are about 1 tcf or less. Qadirpur is the only worthwhile gas field in Sind which at nearly 4-Tcf has reserves of about 720-million barrel oil equivalent.
Standard of journalism in Pakistan has always been extremely poor. Firstly 39-million cubic gas reserves is obviously wrong. This equates to only about 0.07-million barrels. Such a small find is not commercially viable. I would guess that this field has at least 39-billion cft or 7-milion barrels oil equivalent in place. But to call this huge is like having a goat and claiming it is a buffalo.
There is another misconception that if we drill more holes we can produce more gas from the same field. Reservoir engineering is a very specialized subject. Depending upon the type & size of the structure, there is an optimum extraction rate. If too much oil/gas is extracted too soon, it dies and you have wait years before the reservoir recovers enough to start producing.
Additionally, total oil/gas in place or total reserves do not represent that all of this can be commercially extracted. The recovery factor changes with the amount of hydrocarbons in place and actual oil/gas that can be extracted can vary anywhere from 50% to 95%. As rule of thumb recoverable reserves are about 85% to 90% of the oil in place.
I would like to stress that any commercially viable discovery no matter how small is good news. But we should avoid getting europhic about it until such time that we know full details.
According to a report in the business recorder of Jan 20, 2013 gas shortage in Pakistan has crossed 1.6- bcf per day! Even at 39-billion cft, the entire reserves are not enough to make up even one month’s short fall, what comes after?
Such absurd reporting creates nothing but sensationalism and false hope that soon energy shortage will be over. We need about a hundred finds like this one to solve our problem.