Thailand Country Report

Thailand is in the middle of the South East Asian mainland, with the Pacific Ocean on the south-east coast and the Indian Ocean on the south-west coast. Its land area is approximately 513,115 square kilometres, with great plains in the centre, mountainous areas up north and highlands in the north-east. It has a small economy, with GDP in 2009 of around US$243.9 billion (in 2000 US$ terms). In 2009, the population was 67.8 million and income per capita was around US$ 3,600. Thailand is an energy importer, especially crude oil, because of very limited domestic resources. Thailand’s indigenous energy resources include natural gas, coal (only lignite) and biomass. In 2009, proven reserves were 0.4 billion barrels (62 million cubic metres) of oil, 11.0 trillion cubic feet (0.3 trillion cubic metres) of natural gas and 1,239 million tonnes of lignite. Thailand’s total primary energy supply (TPES) was 100.3 Mtoe in 2009. Oil accounted for the largest share at around 29 percent, followed by natural gas (27 percent), coal (15 percent). Others accounted for the remainder (29 percent). In 2009, net imports of energy accounted for 51 percent of TPES. Due to very limited indigenous oil resources, Thailand imported around 80 percent of its crude oil and most of its bituminous coal. Although Thailand produces large quantities of natural gas, about 21 percent of its use was imported from Myanmar In Thailand, natural gas is used as a major energy source for power generation. In 2009, primary natural gas supply was 21.8 Mtoe, around 68 percent was from domestic supply with the rest imported from neighbouring countries. Coal was mainly consumed for power generation and by industry. In addition, it was also heavily used in cement and paper production. Thailand has 29.2GW of installed electricity generation capacity and power generation was about 147.4TWh in 2009. The majority of Thailand’s power is generation using thermal sources (coal, natural gas and oil), accounting for 91.2 percent of generation, followed by hydro (4.9 percent) and geothermal, solar, small hydro and biomass making up the remainder.