Your editorial on "Gas supplies to commercial users" (Business Recorder, October 25) wrongly supports the Ministry of Defence proposal of allowing PIA Training Centre to setup a gas-fired 1-mw captive power plant.
Since the national press, including your esteemed paper, has adequately covered the existing government guidelines for allowing our precious and scarce natural gas for power generation (since August 2004), it is surprising to note your comments relating to most inefficient use of our subsidised gas.
It simply cannot be in our national interest to allow gas engine generators which only use 1/3rd energy for power and waste 2/3rd to the environment.
How can you call such applications "commercial users" when our gas is sold at less than half the international price? Do we want to subsidise inefficiency by allowing gas for such usage?
PIA, and all other users, should be encouraged to develop efficient power plants if they want to use our precious gas. PIA, like others, can use power plant waste heat to operate central air-conditioning and thus double the thermal efficiency of gas usage.
It is pertinent to mention here that major air-conditioning installation at Karachi airport should have been based on power plant waste heat like it is done in many airport terminal buildings in Europe and Far East/South East Asia. If the Karachi Airport Terminal building was designed on this basis, 5 - 6 mw power could have been generated in a most efficient power plant, with waste heat operated central air-conditioning systems for 3,000 - 4,000 tons.
We need to think seriously in terms of efficient utilisation of our scarce energy resources.
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