Taking notice of the public unrest, Prime Minister Gilani has finally decided to convene a two-day summit of stakeholders in Islamabad.
The summit will be packed by all the four chief ministers, the ministers of water and power and natural resources and senior officials of the relevant organizations. And exactly here in lies a potential solution.
Energy in Pakistan falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Water and Power and to a lesser extent the Ministry of Natural Resources.
The former is responsible for power generation and distribution, while the latter is in charge of the countrys natural resources, most of which, at present, are concentrated around oil and gas, Pakistans most used power generation fuels.
This apparent lack of coordination between the stakeholders trusted with planning for the countrys energy needs can be attributed to the crisis. At present, as in the past, little or no information and data sharing exists between the two ministries.
Take for instance, the much-hyped plan to install rental power stations to resolve power shortages. While officials in water and power were busy awarding contracts to install RPPs, little attention was paid to whether there would be enough gas or oil to cater to these projects.
Even the oversight committees, of the respective ministries, in both houses of the legislature do not coordinate. Parliamentarians in one forum often have marginal insight about the issues pertaining to the other.
To top it all off, companies that carry out the functions of the energy industry, from the fuel providers to the power distributors, do not share information. This prevents managers to have essential real time data on productive capacity, fuel availability, load management etc.
So, what Pakistan needs is a Ministry of Energy. The ministries of water and power and natural resources need to be merged so as to allow a coordinated strategy to tackle the current mess and to draft sustainable plans for future energy requirements.
Owing to the technical nature of the field, the energy minister would benefit from the advice of professionals from the industry. An advisory committee of key industry stakeholders, senior technocrats from fuel importers, power generation and distribution companies should provide a forum for coordination and strategy development for the energy sector, in concurrence with the Planning Commission.
Examples may be drawn from countries in the developed as well as developing world where energy planning has been successful. The US entrusts this responsibility to the Department of Energy, Iran to the Ministry of Energy and Turkey to the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources.
A reduction in government portfolios, structural adjustments in governance institutions akin to that practiced outside Pakistan, and the formation of the Ministry of Energy fall in line with the ever so popular "consensus" formed under the recently 18th Amendment.
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