The Economics of Natural Gas Utilization in Developing Countries: Methodology

The sharp oil price increases of the 1970s, and the consequent balance-of-payments difficulties, encouraged many oil-importing developing countries to develop and exploit their indigenous energy resources. Today, several developing countries with commercially attractive reserves of natural gas (for example, Bangladesh, Egypt, Pakistan, and Thailand) have seriously begun to use their gas resources for internal domestic and industrial purposes as well as for exports. They now confront the basic economic question of how to value gas resources and how to allocate them.