Ishmael Ackah, a former student of the University of
Professional Studies, Accra has won the best
presentation prize at the 10th PBS Postgraduate
Research Conference at the University of
Portsmouth, UK.
Ishmael who holds Msc in Energy Economics and
Policy from the University of Surrey, UK is a PhD
candidate at the University of Portsmouth,
specialising in Energy Economics and Policy. He
modelled natural gas demand in selected oil
producing African countries. According to him,
natural gas is a bridge fuel due to its availability
and attractive environmental qualities. As a result
of these, natural gas demand has attracted a lot of
attention in terms of studies and exploration.
In 2011, Africa consumed 525, 434 tons of oil
equivalent (ktoe) of energy of which 28,375 ktoe
was natural gas representing 5.4% according to
data from the International Energy Agency. Out of
this percentage, Algeria, Egypt and Nigeria
consumed 43.2%.
This study applies the structural time series model
(STSM) to the natural gas demand in Algeria, Egypt
and Nigeria to estimate the effect of both economic
and non-economic factors on natural gas demand.
The advantage of the STSM is that, it is capable of
capturing non-observable factors that influence the
demand for natural gas. His study reports a price
and income elasticity of -1.16 and 0.95 for Algeria,
-0.34 and 0.61 for Egypt and -0.39 and 1.5 for
Nigeria.
The underlying energy demand trend suggests that
these countries have been energy-using in terms of
natural gas consumption. This implies that they are
not energy efficient. He recommends that policy
makers should consider energy efficiency education
and encourage the use of energy saving
appliances.
Ishmael will be presenting his latest findings on
energy demand modelling on Ghana and other oil
producing African countries at the 37th IAEE
Conference in New York from 14th to 18th June,
2014.
Credit: Energy Ministry
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