LAHORE, Jan 4: The Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) on Friday continued to face a deficit of over 4,000MW, forcing it to carry out unannounced loadshedding in most parts of the country in addition to the eight hours of declared shedding of load.

Pepco officials said the unannounced loadshedding would end by Saturday noon as 450MW would be saved through shutting down of steel furnaces, which were switched off by the federal Power System Operation Committee on Friday for 15 days.

Also, the Sui Northern Gas Pipeline Limited (SNGPL) has spared some 40 million cubic feet of gas for the Kot Addu Power Station and Bhiki Rental Power, which can also provide a further relief of 200MW. The Sui Southern Gas Pipeline Limited (SSGPL) has also started supplying 25 million cubic feet, which will further ease the situation.

According to Pepco Managing Director Munawar Baseer Ahmad, gas supplies have brought down the deficit by 900MW. Supplies have been diverted to Kot Addu, which has started yielding 1,400MW against 700MW as of yesterday. Bhiki Rental Power would yield another 136MW, and so would the Faisalabad Power Station. But, Liberty Power Station is going out of operation. The deficit, which had burgeoned to a whopping 4,100MW on Thursday night, had been brought down to 3,200MW by Friday evening, he said.

Once oil supplies start pouring in, more IPPs would be back online and mitigate the problem further in the next week or 10 days, he said.

Pepco Director-General Energy Management and Conservation said the supplies had provided the company with some manoeuvring margin and would end the panic situation in the company. With these supplies, the company had been able to control 20 per cent of problem till Friday evening and should be able to do it completely by Saturday noon, he claimed.

Meanwhile, the hydel generation of the company remained stuck at 1,300MW against its peak summer generation of 6,600MW and thermal generation to 2,100MW. Gas driven units, however, saw some improvement by late Friday evening when supplies from the SNGPL and SSGPL started flowing in.

The Pepco team has moved in to repair power transmission lines from HubCo to the rest of the country, says another official. The initial estimates of repair time of four weeks have been revised to two weeks. Meanwhile, oil supply remains crucial to stabilising the energy situation, he said.

Talking about the time to bring the shortage down to a manageable level, both in terms of magnitude and timeframe, he said that once the deficit dropped down to 2,000MW, it would become manageable. But, it would take another 10 days to bring it around that level. At present, if one IPP comes online because of gas or some oil supplies, the other goes offline due to shortage of either of them. In the next few days, things should stabilise, he hoped.