HYDERABAD: Adeel Siddiqui, President of Hyderabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (HCCI), has urged the prime minister to focus on coal-based power generation for overcoming the never-ending energy crisis.

In a statement issued on Saturday, he said more initiatives like Thar coal should be launched within a specific timeline to lessen reliance on LNG and oil-based generation to rid Pakistan of its energy woes.

He added that the ongoing month was likely to be hit by a worse electricity crisis while the upcoming winter season would again lead to a gas shortage problem in the country. He said the government failed to control tendering process for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and it is the third time in a row that it wasn’t able to buy fuel and feared it would lead to a rise in the power tariff.

Resultantly, he said, there would lesser power generation available in the coming months. Fuel import was burdening consumers heavily as the government was increasing electricity tariffs to meet conditionalities for winning IMF’s bailout package. He said overreliance on LNG would force Pakistan to open closed projects which would again benefit investors alone.

He said Pakistan’s liquidity crunch was driven by crude oil’s increasing prices adding since the government was facing financial constraints it was useless to rely on LNG import. It would be better if the government should explore other options for energy production. Pakistan was not alone and was struggling to buy LNG-based fuel, he said.

He said Pakistan was faced with depleting gas reserves thus reliance on LNG. He said that LNG import was putting Pakistani in a difficult situation as LNG was imported to meet the gas shortfall. Its import undermines financial stability and energy conservation efforts.

He said according to one estimate Pakistan’s LNG import would touch $30bn by 2030 and it could even cross this mark which was already over and above the present ratio of $3bn in FY2021-22 as imported LNG is six times more costly than the domestic resource.

LNG resources remained unreliable and its supplies faced default on at least 10 cargoes since 2021 to date which eventually led to a rise in fuel and electricity shortages.

Published in Dawn, July 3rd, 2022