August 23, 2008	Saturday	Sha'aban 20, 1429

ISLAMABAD, Aug 22: The unprecedented power loadshedding in the country is primarily because of financial crisis and fuel shortage, and not because of capacity constraints as being stated by the government.

The worst-ever fiscal crunch being faced by the government and power companies has also forced the Ministry of Water and Power and the Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) to turn down a government request for reducing loadshedding during Ramazan.

Sources told Dawn that the government had asked Pepco to increase power generation in Ramazan, but it had been told that Rs500 million per day would be required for any additional generation.

Background discussions with government officials and data available with Dawn suggest that the lack of capacity addition will cause power shortage of up to 5,500MW in 2010.

The current gap between demand and supply was because of the government’s inability to make full payments to oil suppliers and generation companies, the officials conceded.

The generation from Pepco’s own thermal power plants has shrunk to the lowest level because of the company’s inability to purchase fuel oil from suppliers. On August 20, Wapda’s thermal plants could produce only 1,900MW against its capacity of 4,829MW because of non-availability of furnace oil and technical faults in gears, clutches and switches.

Likewise, the generation from IPPs stood at about 3,470MW on Aug 19 against their capacity of 6,115MW, again because of financial constraints.

The thermal power generation has been less than 6,000MW against the total capacity of about 12,000MW for two months.

The sources said the country’s oldest refinery, Attock Refinery Limited, had been forced to reduce its throughput by about 30 per cent early this week after its capacity to store light sulphur furnace oil (LSFO) reached its peak and the PSO stopped lifting the product for onward supply to Kot Addu Thermal Power Company (Kapco) because of its inability to pay for fuel oil.

The Kapco plant, which can also be run on natural gas, has not been able to produce electricity to its capacity because the gas utilities have reduced their supplies to about 60MMCFD (million cubic feet per day) form 300MMCFD.

The officials admitted that despite a generation capacity of about 18,000MW, Pepco plants could not produce more than 12,000MW in the last two months.Thermal plants in Karachi could not generate more than 1,300MW against a capacity of about 1,800MW because of technical problems and fuel shortages.