SUNDAY JUNE 24: His first day in office: Prime Minister spells out steps to tackle power crisis

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf on Saturday directed the Ministry of Petroleum to ensure the supply of 28,000 tones of fuel oil to power sector daily to add 1200 MW to the national grid. The Prime Minister stated this while chairing an important Energy Meeting at Prime Minister's House on Saturday.
--- asks petroleum ministry to ensure supply of 28,000 tonnes of fuel oil to power sector daily
The meeting also decided to provide 15mmcfd to GTPS, Faisalabad which would add an another 65 MW to the national grid. The meeting also discussed to provide 100 mmcfd additional supply of gas to Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation (KESC) to produce 300 MW power, which could help KESC reduce its offtake from the national grid of equal quantity of power making it available for helping in improving the supply of electricity.
The gas is proposed to be made available to the power sector by suspending its supply of one day more to the industrial and the Captive power sectors in Punjab sparing the 66 mmcfd of gas for use in the most efficient power plants to produce electricity. Similarly, 150mmcfd gas is proposed to be saved from Sindh by cutting its supply by one day more from the industrial and the CNG sectors which will be used by KESC for power generation.
In the meeting, it was also decided to constitute two committees comprising Minister for Water and Power, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, Minister for Information, Qamar Zaman Kaira, Senator Dr Asim Hussain and Minister for Kashmir Affairs, Mian Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo to hold negotiations with the representatives of the Punjab industry and CNG with a view to successfully persuading them to agree to one day more suspension of gas supply to sectors in view of acute requirement of gas in the power sector.
The other committee consisting of Dr Hafeez Shaikh, Minister for Finance, Syed Khurshid Shah, Minister for Religious Affairs has been asked to hold talks with Governor of Sindh, Dr Ishrat ul Ibad and the Chief Minister Sindh to hold talks with the stakeholders for reduction in gas supply.