HYDERABAD: Prominent nuclear scientist and chairman of Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) project in Thar, Dr Samar Mubarakmand, on Wednesday appealed to Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah to fully fund the UCG project of 100 megawatts electricity and end the power crisis.

Talking to Dawn over phone, Dr Mubarakmand said that he had written a letter to the chief minister on Feb 3 and put forth three suggestions, advising him to fund the UCG project, run it on his own to earn revenue by selling electricity and make it a development project to generate both electricity, diesel, fertilisers and some other by-products.

“The vision of Thar Coal belongs to Sindh as actually this is the project of Sindh government being funded by the federal government under the ministry of planning, development and reforms and Planning Commission (PC),” he said.

He said that Sindh government must float tenders for national and international companies to set up plants at or near Islamkot in Thar to generate diesel, fertilisers, rubber, plastic and several other products from coal and gas through the UCG process to make the province and the country self-reliant in energy. He said the provincial government would not have to spend even a single penny from its pocket since private companies would incur the entire cost of the plants.

The government must rise to the occasion to benefit people of Sindh and help generate millions of jobs through private companies, he said. “This (UCG) is an environment-friendly and low-cost project because all the work is carried out underground without harming environment,” he said.

“Around 180 billion tonnes of coal reserves are able to produce 50,000MW of electricity by converting the coal gas from lignite (a kind of coal) into electricity for coming 600 years,” he said, adding the country needed just 20,000MW and the rest could be sold to earn foreign exchange.

The UCG project alone cost Rs1 billion. It was launched in 2009 for producing gas from coal reserves on experimental basis and it successfully achieved the target in 2011 within two years, he said.

Thereafter, the science and technology department of the Planning Commission approved the project for 100MW electricity to be generated through UCG. Its cost was Rs9bn and was scheduled to be completed within two years, he said.

He said the project went into hibernation for over one and a half years and was launched in October 2012 when the department released Rs900 million. Later, Rs1,000m were released in 2013-14 and Rs1,000m for the project in 2014-15, he said.

The project was then transferred to the energy department of the PC which released Rs360m and then completely stopped funding in 2016-17. Only 33 per cent out of total Rs9bn had been released so far, he said.

“The UCG project is now able to generate eight megawatts of electricity through coal gas but both the federal and provincial governments are neither purchasing power from it nor releasing funds to run the project,” he said.

He said that the two-year project was extended to six-and-a-half years which would naturally raise its cost in terms of salaries of 500 workers and operation cost.

Dr Mubarakmand expressed serious reservations over some officers of the energy department who “…do not want to run this project and want to shut it down and sack over 500 workers working at the plant because of some vested interest”.

Workers appeal to fund UCG project

The president of Peyaam Workers Union of the UCG project, Mohammad Umar Mohiul Islam, appealed to the Sindh and federal governments to keep the project alive and turn it into a department instead of rendering it defunct and its workers redundant.

He demanded the federal government regularise jobs of 500 workers of the UCG project and release and enhance funds for the project.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2017