[Stoves] the price of bottled gas

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Andrew

The same situation exists in several countries. Senegal has exactly the same problems you describe below. 

One problem with subsidies is that parliament will allocate a certain budget for subsidising a certain total fuel volume. After some time the total sold exceeds the anticipated total and there is a shortfall in the subsidy. This can happen with the whole petroleum sector or just for LPG. 

The inevitable consequences are that people retrn to more traditional fuels. 

An important finding in the Indonesian surveys conducted recently (more to come) is that many homes that answered 'LPG' to the question as to what their primary cooking fuel is, have been using wood for water heating - often using more total energy in biomass than LPG. The shift back to wood is rapid. It is used for a greater range of tasks than before. The shift is not easy to notice because they continue to use LPG. 

This is instructive for survey designers. We need to know what the range of fuels is, how many MJ of each is used per month and what it is used for. The differentiated cost is also important. 

Thanks
Crispin
From BB9900

-----Original Message-----
From: "Andrew C. Parker" <acparker at xmission.com>
Sender: "Stoves" <stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Date: Thu, 09 May 2013 11:16:37 
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves<stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Reply-To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
	<stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: Re: [Stoves] the price of bottled gas

I thought these developments in Ecuador might be of interest to the list.   
It highlights the difficulties of maintaining subsidies on bottled gas.   
For the Spanish deficient, the articles discuss the scarcity of subsidized  
gas in certain provinces of Ecuador that is forcing some to cook with wood  
to feed their families.  Reasons for the scarcities are usually black  
market reselling of gas to unauthorized users, such as restaurants, taxis,  
cars, buses, etc., smuggling of gas to Colombia, and production  
shortages.  (Ironically, Ecuador, a member of OPEC, is often forced to  
purchase LPG from Colombia at market rates to meet demand for subsidized  
bottled gas)

<http://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/2013/05/08/nota/910461/imbabura-obligados-cocinar-lena-debido-escasez-gas>
<http://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/2013/05/08/nota/910451/venta-cilindros-es-irregular-rios-esmeraldas>

_______________________________________________
Stoves mailing list

to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org

to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org

for more Biomass Cooking Stoves,  News and Information see our web site:
http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/



_______________________________________________________
Unlimited Disk, Data Transfer, PHP/MySQL Domain Hosting
              http://www.doteasy.com