Pakistan to start producing power from Thar coal in few days
Pakistan’s decades-old dream of producing electricity from the world’s seventh largest coal reserves in Thar has almost come true. The country is all set to start generating power with the help of coal in the next few days.
“We are scheduled to test one of the two 330-megawatt power plants based on Thar coal any day between March 20 and 25,” revealed Engro Powergen Thar CEO Ahsan Zafar Syed while talking to The Express Tribune.
The company will test the second plant in late April.
“We are four months ahead of the timeline set for switching on the power plants,” he said. “The project is almost done well within the budgeted cost (investment) of $1.1 billion while we have significantly saved cost of the mining project, which was originally estimated at $845 million.”
Both the plants will be connected to the national grid one by one through the 232 km Thar-Matiari transmission line during their testing phase.
In June, both the plants would formally start commercial production “as the commercial operation date (COD) of the first mine-mouth power project is set for June 2019,” he said.
Pakistan discovered the Thar coalfields in 1991. These contain the world’s seventh largest coal reserves of 175 billion tons, more than the combined oil reserves of energy-rich Saudi Arabia and Iran, and 68 times higher than Pakistan’s total gas reserves. Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC) – a group of seven stakeholders including the government of Sindh with 51% majority stake as well as Engro, the Habib Group and Hubco – has dug 148 metres down block-II in Thar coalfields in the past nine years.
SECMC has been allotted block-II which carries only 1% of the total reserves in Thar. “Coal deposits in block-II are enough to produce 5,000MW of electricity for the next 50 years,” Syed said. “We have invested a lot of time, money and human resources to make the dream come true.”