ISLAMABAD: The overall consumption of petroleum products in the country has touched 13,879 million tonnes mark during nine months of current fiscal year as compared to 13,802 million tonnes in corresponding period of the previous year.
The consumption posted a positive growth of 0.6 percent, said a data available with this agency.
It said agriculture sector witnessed 40.8 percent decline followed by the government sector with 20.3 percent.
Similarly, power sector and household sector had also shown negative growth in the consumption of petroleum products for the period under discussion, posting - 5.2 percent and -8 percent respectively.
The data said although petroleum products considered as necessary inputs of the power sector, yet the negative growth in power as well as household sector can be attributed to changes in demand behavior toward relatively cheaper alternatives.
The industry sector had shown positive growth of 24.2 percent in the consumption of petroleum products during the period when compared with previous year, mainly due to recovery in economic activity.
The data said transport sector usually consumes high quantity of petroleum products but surprisingly this sector showed a relative small growth of 3.5 percent during the period under consideration.
Meanwhile, when contacted, an official source on Tuesday said Pakistan's total energy consumption stood at 38.8 million tonnes of oil equivalent in 2010-11. The relative importance of the various sources of energy consumption of Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG), electricity and coal has been broadly similar since 2005-06.
He said since oil is the more expensive fuel because of Pakistan's imports at the high international prices the share of oil consumption declined by 3 percentage points during the period under review.
The consumption of petroleum products showed a continuous declining trend since 2001-02, he said and added however, due to positive changes in years 2004-05, 2007-08 and 2009-10, the overall average for last ten years became positive 1.1 percent per annum.
The longer term trend suggests that composition of annual energy consumption is shifting from petroleum products to other energy sources due to volatile prices of oil. Thus consumption of gas, electricity and coal has increased at an average of 5.1 percent, 4.8 percent and 7.7 percent per annum for last ten years.
With regard to share of gas consumption, the official said it stood at the highest equal to 43.2 percent of the total energy mix of the country, followed by oil with 29 percent.
The major consumption source of natural gas witnessed an increase in share by almost 4 percentage points during last year as compared to 2005-06. This is due to the substitution effect to a cheaper source from an expensive source.
He said the analysis of the sectoral consumption of gas indicates that during last nine months, the consumption of gas in the cement sector was 1.4 billion cubic feet compared to 0.6 billion in the corresponding period last year, thus posting a positive growth of 133 per cent during the period under review.
The industrial sector experienced a decline in consumption of gas and posted a negative growth of 6.8 percent during the period under review when compared to the same period last year.
The transport sectors is the most significant sector, posting a positive growth in gas consumption of 14.2 percent during 2010-11 as compared with 2009-10 and a positive growth of 10.8 per cent during last nine months.
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