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