Pakistan coal reserves are estimated at 175 billion tons which according to the Vice-Chancellor (VC) of Punjab University, Professor Dr Mujahid Kamran equal 618 billion barrels of crude oil. According to the most reliable analytical reports Saudi Arabian crude oil reserves are estimated at around 260 billion barrels. At 60 Dollars per barrel this equates to 3708 Billion Dollars or approx. 4 Trillion Dollars (at current prices). At future prices these reserves will be worth 8 or 24 Trillion Dollars. This is enough money to build the most modern infrastructure, the best roads, the best hospitals, the best education, the best universities, the best hi-speed rail system and the best public transportation system on the planet.
It is pedalogical to know that Saudi Arabia only sells about 9 Billion Barrels of Oil per day. It has the best infrastructure in the world, with a cradle to grave welfare system for its citizens, superb freeways, fantastic hospitals and an infrastructure that is the envy of the world.
Summary of Reserve Data as of 2007Country Reserves 1 Production 2 Reserve life 3
109 bbl 109 m3 106 bbl/d 103 m3/d years
Saudi Arabia 260 41 8.8 1,400 81
Canada 179 28.5 2.7 430 182
Iran 136 21.6 3.9 620 96
Iraq 115 18.3 3.7 590 85
Kuwait 99 15.7 2.5 400 108
United Arab Emirates 97 15.4 2.5 400 106
Venezuela 80 13 2.4 380 91
Russia 60 9.5 9.5 1,510 17
Libya 42 6.7 1.8 290 63
Nigeria 36 5.7 2.3 370 43
United States 21 3.3 4.9 780 11
Mexico 12 1.9 3.2 510 10
Total of top twelve reserves 1,137 180.8 48.2 7,660 65
Notes:
1 Claimed or estimated reserves in billions (109) of barrels (converted to billions of cubic metres). (Source: Oil & Gas Journal, January, 2007)
2 Production rate in millions (106) of barrels per day (converted to thousands of cubic metres per day) (Source: US Energy Information Authority, September, 2007)[15]
3 Reserve to Production ratio (in years), calculated as reserves / annual production. (from above)
A couple of Chinese companies have already signed Memorandum’s of Understanding to excavate and process this clean coal energy.
Pakistan’s credit crunch in temporary. Once the country gets over the hump in the next few years, it can begin improving its infrastructure which is the best in South Asia even now.
Sorry to say the Honourable VC of Punjab university is erroneous and downright misleading in this article. To put things in proper perspective, and this is the one field where I know a little as I have spent more than 40 years in the petroleum/energy sector; kindly let me explain:
Pakistani coal reserves are lignite or brown coal. These cannot be used as such and have to be cleaned of impurities, mainly sulphur which gives out sulphur dioxide upon burning, a highly poisonous substance.
We have been planning to use Thar coal for power generation for the last ten years, but we neither have the money nor idiginous technology to make use of this resource. We depend upon foreign investment which has been a long time coming. Why don’t we ask ourselves the question that when we are so rich in coal, why do we import nearly $3-millon tons of coal from abroad for use in steel Mill and Cement plants?
The process for conversion of coal into liquid hydrocarbons was developed by Dr Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch (also called Fischer Tropsch synthesis) in 1925 and used by the Nazi Germany where about $6-million tons of liquid hydrocarbons were being produced by 1944. Following the sanctions imposed during the apartheid regime, South African
Sassol developed the Fischer Tropsch process further and are currently South Africa is the only country that is CTL technology is employed on commercial scale.
To give you an idea of the costs involved; work is in progress in China to set up a CTL plant in the Inner Mongolian region for converting Shenhue coal into petroleum products.
The plant would initially produce approximately 1-million tons of refined products at a cost of the $3.2-billon. Total cost of the project when completed in 2010 would be about $10-billion.
As I understand it, the main problem lies in the fact that the process produces a very large amount of CO2, the main green house gas. A very rough estimate would need 3.5 –million tons of good quality coal to produce about 1-million tons of liquid hydrocarbons. In lay man’s terms it costs about $65-70 per bbl to produce liquid hydrocarbons using CTL technology. In the case of lignite, percentage of carbon being very low, the figure would be much higher.
It is grossly misleading to quote Saudi and other OPEC countries and compare theoretical total BTU of Thar Lignite deposits with the OPEC countries proven oil reserves in terms of oil equivalent. Thar coal deposits will never be utilized for CTL conversion. No country in the world has the resources to convert all of the Thar lignite into liquid hydrocarbons. To use this as a basis for saying that credit crunch is temporary as the article goes on to say is insulting people's intelligence. Does the Hon VC imply that these coal deposits can be converted into liquid hydrocarbons and exported to earn cash as OPEC countries do?
We should be happy if and when Pakistan finally starts using this resource for power generation.
It is like saying that Taiwan with 25-million population has a GDP of $390-billion, Pakistan with 170-million population has a potential of $2-trillion economy and start getting all excited completely ignoring that Pakistan GDP is only $100-billion.
So let us stop living in a fool’s paradise. It is about time that we grew up and faced ground realities. Also this goes to show how the responsible people such as VC of Punjab University are willingly or unwillingly distorting the truth.
