“Scientifically, this is possible… however, not all kinds of coal lend themselves to economically viable gasification.”
That is not a dismissal—that is a conditional engineering problem.
The Real Failure: Science vs Policy Continuity
Where the narrative becomes deliberately misleading is when experimental outcomes are equated with policy outcomes. A pilot producing 8MW after billions in investment is framed as “failure,” but no serious analyst asks the next question: what happened after the pilot?
Because that is where the Pakistani story always breaks.
Funding discontinuity.
Policy shifts.
Contract reallocations.
Institutional sabotage.
As one observer bluntly puts it:
“پلاننگ کمیشن کو جب کامیابی کا لیٹر بھیجا گیا تب سے ان کی فنڈنگ روک دی گئی اور مائننگ کے ٹھیکے بانٹ دیے گئے۔”
That single sentence carries more truth than entire polished think-pieces.
Scientific programs require continuity. Pakistan replaces continuity with political turnover.
The Reko Diq Narrative: Oversimplified, Again
The same reductionist framing is applied to Reko Diq, where exploratory claims, feasibility ambitions, and eventual disputes are flattened into “he promised billions, delivered nothing.”
This is not how mining economics works.
Exploration success does not equal extraction success.
Geological identification does not guarantee commercial viability.
And more importantly, sovereign disputes and arbitration failures are not the responsibility of a single scientist.
Yet the narrative prefers a villain over systemic accountability.
