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This paper aims to analyze the context of community opinions and participation in the natural gas sector in developing countries, a case study of Tanzania. To achieve this purpose, the study pointed out six facts, namely, information on the natural gas sector; awareness of the natural gas-related policies; laws and regulations and the creation of employment opportunities; local experts in the natural gas sector; the use of natural gas revenues; and natural gas for poverty reduction and improvement of social well-being.

The study is a systematic review of the literature on community participation based on the relevant studies published between 2010 and 2018. A comprehensive literature review was carried out following the seven-step model whereby relevant themes from different potential bibliographic databases such as Google Scholar were systematically selected, compiled and analyzed using descriptive methods.

The study revealed that despite the various efforts made by the governments and other stakeholders to promote community participation, there is an inadequate level of community participation in the natural gas sector in developing countries. There are limited local experts for natural gas operations and low transparency on natural gas contracts, agreements and revenues. Therefore, there is the need to raise awareness for a highly informed society with a clear sense of ownership of the natural gas wealth among the local communities. Moreover, transparency and accountability are recommended for the sustainable natural gas sector development.

This paper offers new and current cross-sectoral inclusion, opinions, hopes and concerns of the community on the natural gas sector management in developing countries.

The purpose of the paper is to provide to a better scientific understanding of Indonesia’s domestic gas allocation policy and its effects on the national economy and to answer the question of what best priorities can be set in allocating the natural gas for the domestic market to maximize the benefits for the national economy.

The authors apply a Computabled General Equilibrium (CGE). The Social Accounting Matrix 2008 is used to calibrate the CGE Model. There are two scenarios proposed, each is simulated with certain percentage of gas supply curtailment (50 MMSCFD, Scenario A), (100 MMSCFD, Scenario B).

It is confirmed that government’s current policy to give priority to oil production is not the optimum way to maximize added value of natural gas to Indonesian economy. While oil production generates state revenue, it is industry and petrochemical sector that induces high economic impacts because of strong backward and forward linkages.

Due to the limited data availability, it is assumed that the data on the SAM 2008 are valid for describing the structure of Indonesian economy.

The paper provides recommendation to the government to revise gas allocation policy by changing the rank of consumers’ priority.

This paper provides instruments to measure the impact of Indonesia’s domestic gas allocation policy. Finding the best hierarchy of consumer priorities is essential for maximizing added value of natural gas for the national economy.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the natural gas sector in Italy, with a specific focus on the regulatory framework, the development of infrastructures and the supply and demand balance.

The research has been developed by applying qualitative and quantitative methodologies. In particular, a review and a qualitative analysis have been proposed to analyze the regulatory framework and the development of infrastructure, whereas the consumption trend is quantitatively examined by means of the decomposition analysis.

This study highlights how the legislation is complete and in line with European Union (EU) prescriptions, and how the infrastructure is quite well-developed, even though many expected developments are on hold due to the current market conditions. The supply and demand balance highlights a decreasing trend of the consumption owing to the aggressive development of renewables and permanence of a weak economic growth. Finally, the decomposition analysis of total and sectorial natural gas demand has emphasized that the increase of energy intensity can be considered responsible for a large share of consumption between 1995 and 2014.

The paper details the status of the natural gas sector in Italy, which is one of the largest consumers of natural gas within the EU. Despite its importance, the Italian natural gas sector has not been subjected to extensive research, and this paper represents a first attempt to provide an overview of the sector.

With over 100 years of commercial activity, Trinidad and Tobago's energy sector has demonstrated significant growth and dynamism. This paper aims to provide a historical account of gas sector developments and seeks to decipher the motivating factors and key policy positions of the government.

A review of policy framing documents in the gas sector is conducted. These are juxtaposed with historical information on hydrocarbon production, level of foreign direct investment and State participation. The impact on the country's economy in terms of energy revenues and gross domestic product (GDP) is also examined.

Over the period 1962‐2007, daily average hydrocarbon production increased eightfold to 800,000 barrels of oil equivalent due mostly to natural gas. Total energy revenues and GDP have grown significantly. Contributing factors include an evolving fiscal regime to attract foreign investment, strategic State investments, joint venture arrangements, monopoly gas transmission and merchant roles and an effective institutional framework. Government stewardship, market forces and private sector investment moulded the sector. Recent measures include revisions to the fiscal regime and sector diversification aimed at sustaining the industry.

Energy sector developments of this small island economy have largely escaped the purview of the mainstream academic literature. Trinidad and Tobago's energy policy has not been well articulated or documented, and this paper serves to act as a springboard for further studies which may provide policy direction for other countries.

This study aims to investigate the challenges facing the implementation of the natural gas policy in Tanzania.

A structured questionnaire was used to collect data, while the principal component analysis and statistical tests were used to explore the relationship between the opinions on the influential factors for the natural gas policy implementation and the demographic information.

The findings showed that over 50 per cent of the respondents regarded poor community participation and transparency and accountability as the major policy implementation challenges. Most of the demographic information showed the statistically significant effects of the policy implementation influential factors.

This paper provides the current challenges facing the implementation of the national natural gas policy in Tanzania.

The purpose of this paper is to establish groups of stakeholders who win and lose from changes in natural gas prices and to develop practical recommendations for a state regulator for the optimal setting natural gas prices in the domestic market through an example of Ukraine.

In this study, to identify groups of stakeholders with gains and losses from the pricing of natural gas, the author used traditional methods of correlation and statistical regression analysis, including the ordinary least squares (OLS) method.

The main profit from natural gas remains in the extraction sector. The remaining profit is distributed among the various stakeholders. The consumers during rapidly rising gas prices have to rely on energy efficiency and switching to alternative, less costly resources. The existing system of unified natural gas price for all industrial consumers is inefficient and leads to the losses of the largest industrial sectors in Ukraine – metallurgy and chemical industry. With the help of the developed models, the author determined the critical levels of natural gas prices for these two industries.

The study is limited by data about activity of eight key manufacturing companies, four gas distribution companies, and main state gas companies from two country only.

Defined levels can be used by a state regulatory authority as a boundary, above which these industries will be unprofitable and their fate along with hundred thousands of workers will be questionable.

This is the first paper that set the critical levels of natural gas prices for two manufacturing industries in Ukraine.

In the last decade, the Italian natural gas market has undergone profound changes. The slow ongoing process of liberalization that began in 2000 has produced many changes in the industry as companies have had to react to the new regulatory framework. Many companies have sought agreements, alliances and mergers to consolidate their position in the market, other companies have sought to diversify their product range by becoming multi-utility companies, others, unable to react to the new competitive pressures, have gone bankrupt. The aim of the work is to analyse the performance of natural gas retail companies after the liberalization of the sector.

The authors carry out a financial statement analysis for indexes in order to evaluate business management in terms of the financial, profitability and liquidity aspects. The authors analysed a sample of 111 companies operating in Italy for a six-year period (2004-2009) following the full liberalization of the sector (January 1, 2003).

Results show that many of the firms in the sample are suffering from a reduction in profits and present serious financial weaknesses. In particular, the companies that perform the worst are the small, new entrants and those in the south of Italy. In regard to the new entrants it should be noted that although more than ten years have passed since the beginning of the liberalization process, entry barriers are still present. As regards the business diversification, the best financial and operating results are achieved by large firms, listed companies and those which grew mainly through M&As.

Even though there are numerous theoretical and empirical studies on the effects of diversification strategies and M&As, very few researchers have analyzed these effects in the context of a liberalization process of an energy sector. Starting from this gap in the literature, the work aims to analyse the strategies implemented by the Italian companies in the natural gas retail segment.

The empirical findings will help the policy makers of Italy in understanding that more than ten years since the beginning of the natural gas market liberalization, entry barriers are still present. Although all consumers have been free to choose their supplier since 2003, the incumbent firms have maintained a dominant position in the market, thanks to a “weak” unbundling (often the incumbent retail operator belongs to the same group as the distribution network operator) and to the advantage in the supply phase by means of a long-term contract with a “take or pay” clause.

Italy has always been characterized by the centrality of natural gas in its energy basket and it is the third European country for annual consumption. Despite the importance of this energy source, no substantial work has been done in this regard with reference to Italy.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the historical gas allocation pattern for seeking appropriate arrangement and utilization of potentially insufficient natural gas supply available in Pakistan up to 2030.

This study presents Markov chain-based modeling of historical gas allocation data followed by its validation through error evaluation. Structural prediction using classical Chapman–Kolmogorov method and varying-order polynomial regression in the historical transition matrices are presented.

Markov chain model reproduces the terminal state vector with 99.8 per cent accuracy, thus demonstrating its validity for capturing the history. Lower order polynomial regression results in better structural prediction compared with higher order ones in terms of closeness with Markov approach-based prediction.

The data belongs to a certain geographic region with specific gas demand and supply profile. The proposition may be tested further by researchers to check the validity for other comparable structural predictions/analyses.

This study can facilitate policy-making in the field of natural gas allocation and management in Pakistan specifically and other comparable countries generally.

Two major literature gaps filled through this study are: first, Markov chain model becomes stationary when projected using Chapman–Kolmogorov relation in terms of a fixed, average transition matrix resulting in an equilibrium state after a finite number of future steps. Second, most of the previous studies analyze various gas consumption sectors individually, thus lacking integrated gas allocation policy.

The learning outcome of this paper are as follows: enabling students to learn about business and marketing issues of the natural gas distribution industry. To expose students to organizational processes aimed at finding solutions to customer issues. To make them appreciate the aspects of service quality and SERVQUAL model. To make the students aware of the significance of market research for problem-solving. How to use market research findings to address the customer issues? Enabling the students to learn how cross-functional teams contribute to addressing marketing and customer issues. Students should appreciate how to study towards creating a customer-centric organization with an organization-wide commitment including that from the top leadership.

Abhay Shankar, Sr. Manager-Customer Service at Reliable Gas Company Limited a state government piped natural gas (PNG) distribution utility whose customer service department is concerned about the provision of best service to its PNG domestic customers. Domestic customers are low volume but largest in numbers and are considered to be a tough, demanding customer segment. A general opinion among the marketing team of the company is that they are trying their best to serve its customers and that their efforts are no less than their private sector counterpart global gas customer service efforts. Abhay is in dilemma on what to do to improve customer services?

Masters students.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 8 Marketing.