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" <[email protected]> Sender: "Stoves" <[email protected]> Date: Thu, 09 May 2013 11:16:37 To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves<[email protected]> Reply-To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <[email protected]> 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 [email protected] 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 _______________________________________________ Stoves mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address [email protected] 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/
