The country will start facing up to 8 hours load-shedding from second half of May if power plants would continue supplying oil and gas for power generation, the Ministry of Water and Power informed Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Thursday.
Secretary Water and Power Saifullah Chattha informed the committee that in the next half of May, duration of load-shedding in the urban area would be between 4 to 5 hours, whereas, in rural area it would be between 7 to 8 hours, depending on the situation of the supply of oil and gas to power generation units.
He said that high losses feeders were excluded from the load shedding plan, where losses were up to 40 percent, adding that today (Thursday) there was nil load-shedding as generation capacity stood at 12,000 MW that is equal to demand. He admitted that long hours of power failure were observed in Ghura (Punjab) and some areas of Quetta (Balochistan) which is incidental.
He further said that in Ramazan, the power would not be discontinued at the time of Sehri and Iftar. In addition, he said the government has planned to keep the flow of electricity up to 6 hours regularly in rural areas during harvesting season. Syed Khurshid Shah chaired the PAC meeting which examined the leftover audit reports of Wapda and NTDC for 2011-12. In his constituency (interior Sindh), he claimed, the power load shedding was up to 12 hours. He inquired from Secretary Water and Power the factual position of load shedding in the country. He further said that the ministry has directed to cut power supply up to 18 hours where electric bills were not paid.
The secretary recalled that in a recent meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, it was decided that additional gas would be diverted to power plants for power generation. He said, "Four power plants running on the fuel have been allocated additional gas. It helps the government save a significant amount of generation cost which was Rs 9.5 billion per month if run on oil.
Committee Member Naveed Qamar asked the Ministry of Water and Power officials how long they would continue diverting gas to these power plants by suspending supply to CNG and fertilizer sectors as ultimately the government has to import fertiliser on high cost.
Answering another question, he said the supply of additional gas to power plants would continue for the summer season. Ministry of Water and Power held a meeting at the start of current year with fertiliser companies which agreed that three months uninterrupted gas supply to fertiliser plants would generate 16,000 tons fertiliser and further need would be met through import, he maintained.
The secretary said the Mangla Dam raising project has been completed which would help store water three times more than the previous storage capacity. The additional water would be utilised for hydro generation of additional 6,000 MW. Secretary Water and Power said that one unit of Chashma Power Plant has been closed due to essential repair, adding that each power plant was temporarily shut for maintenance during different months of the year. Khurshid suggested that the condition of NTN should be tied to the purchase of air conditioners.