dr.umer
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7 Nov 2008
RAWALPINDI:
Pakistan has about 850 billion cubic feet resources of coal at the moment but unfortunately the country has been facing an acute shortage of electricity which is badly affecting the national economy.
The available resources of the coal are equal to 400 billion barrels of oil and the government has been spending $4 billion annually to fulfill the demand of oil but such a costly demand can be easily fulfilled by utilizing only two percent of available resources of coal in the country.
According to a Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (RCCI) press release the figures were shared by the president of the chamber with the participants of seminar on Power Crisis here on Thursday.
The chamber president said the present resources of the coal could produce 20,000 megawatts electricity for 40 long years but the government had only been depending on hydro power to generate the electricity. Such an approach had demanded construction of new dams and water reservoirs that is not possible due to controversies and conspiracies.
The chamber office holder said new technology demanded a certain degree of moisture in the coal to make it usable and Pakistani coal naturally had that level of dampness but successive governments had failed to utilize the blessing of nature that had resulted in prolonged load-shedding.
The chamber urges the government to use the coal resources to generate electricity to meet the rising demand of power and provide relief to the industry so that the national economy could see an upward movement.