LAHORE, May 12: The power supply situation improved a bit in the country on Friday as more money and fuel flowed into the sector after the federal government spared Rs23 billion for it, but the social situation remained precarious with protests continued in some cities.

On Saturday, the total deficit dropped down to around 5,500MW, restricting loadshedding to around 10 hours for cities and more than 15 for rural grids throughout the country.

According to the power planners, the government has forced the Sui Northern Gas Pipeline Limited (SNGPL) to ensure supply of 307 million cubic feet of gas per day (mmcfd) to the power sector, as decided during the energy conference. It provided a relief of 1,000MW to the sector.

Another relief of around 1,200MW came from Hub Power Company (Hubco), which came back fully after getting its accounts restored, which were frozen by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) due to some GST payment dispute. It came back fully after four days and increased its generation from 300MW to 1,200MW with a straight relief of 900MW.

The third relief to the sector came from the smaller IPPs, which had put the government on the sovereign default notice. With the government committing to their case to the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) and releasing them part payment, four of them (Nishat Power, Nishat Chunian, Liberty Tech and Atlas Power) have come back online, adding some 400MW to the national grid. “These steps have taken the total IPP contribution to over 6,834MW from around 5,000MW till four days ago,” says an official of Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco).

To the company’s and people’s good luck, national hydrology has also improved in the last 24 hours – another relief of around 700MW. On Saturday, the hydel contribution improved from 3,100MW on Friday to 3,849MW, he says. “All these management, financial and natural factors have enabled the power planners to restrict loadshedding to a scheduled one only (around 10 hours outages for cities and more than 15 for rural grids), and bring some social and political sanity back to the country.”

The most important factor would now be sustainability of current scheme of things, says another Pepco official. In all probability, the hydrology would keep on improving in the next few days, adding, on average, 200MW to national grid daily.

But, the decisive factor would be oil and gas supplies. The gas supplies are the only solution as it keeps cost of generation within financial limits of the sector. With rising temperature, if more supplies can be directed to power generation, loadshedding could be restricted to some schedule – eight hours for cities and 12 for rural. But if they dwindle, and the sector has to be run on diesel and furnace oil, the circular debt would spin out of control and take things back to square one, he says.

Meanwhile, four demonstrations were held in the city against power outages on Saturday.

Protesters blocked traffic in Samanabad, Yateem Khana Chowk, Baghbanpura and Daroghawala by burning tyres.