A GOOD example of how Pakistan is hunkering down further and further in the face of increasing scarcities is provided by natural gas. Pakistan has been blessed with abundant gas discoveries from a very early age, and one of the first public sector enterprises created in the country was Pakistan Petroleum in 1950.

From a country with barely any energy sources, and practically no power generation capability at birth, Pakistan built an industrial base for itself in large measure due to its abundant endowment of domestic natural gas. In fact, few people know this, but the country’s oldest fertiliser manufacturer — Engro — got its start in the early 1960s when its original parent company called Esso was prospecting for oil and found gas by accident in the Mari field, which was out in the middle of a desert at that time. Since Esso was an oil company, they could not figure out what to do with their gas find and left it for a few years. It was not until later that somebody somewhere figured out that they could manufacture fertiliser instead, if only the government could negotiate an appropriate price with them, given that fertiliser was a controlled price product.

This was in the early to mid-1960s, and Esso fertiliser was born, probably the second fertiliser manufacturer in the country at the time. Since then, more discoveries were made, and more fertiliser manufacturers cropped up, especially in the late 1970s with the arrival of Fauji Fertiliser into the same business. The first thermal power plants had also come up in the........

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