ISLAMABAD, Sept 3: The country seems to be confronting more setbacks than solutions in resolving chronic energy crisis over the long term.

Water and Power Secretary Zafar Mahmood told reporters on Monday that the 7,100mw Bunji hydropower project on the Indus, near Gilgit, had been found to be on an active earthquake fault line. Hence the government had decided to conduct a fresh feasibility study, which would cause a cost overrun and delay in implementation of the project.

With an estimated cost of about $7 billion approved by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC), the project was slated for completion by Aug 2010.

The senior official was talking to journalists on the sidelines of a meeting of the sub-committee of the National Assembly’s standing committee on water and power.

Asked how long would the nation’s energy torment go on, the secretary said the loadshedding would continue as long as the difference between prices for power purchase and sale was not bridged.

He explained that the country had enough capacity to meet the power demand, but the cost of running all plants, some of them very inefficient and expensive, was too high. “This makes electricity produced by such units unaffordable.”

He said the government was facing problems in removing disparity in power rates for different consumers because of difference in cost of electricity produced from hydropower and gas was cheaper than that obtained from oil and diesel. Zafar Mahmood said the demand for electricity was rising beyond thr government’s estimates as even airconditioners were being run on ‘kundas.’

On top of that, the use of inefficient equipment by consumers was also contributing to the booming power demand. Moreover,the secretary added, the “culture of not paying electricity bills” Mr Mahmood said 14,000mw of electricity was sufficient to meet the “actual demand”, but pilferage and inefficiency took the demand to 19,000 megawatt.

In winter, however, when the use of air conditioners, fans and other equipments comes down, the power shortfall would also ease out.

He said the government had been able to add about 3000mw of generation capacity in four years, this was consumed against decline in the existing capacity. However, the government was now trying to bring efficiency in generation units to help increase their life and add up to 950MW of lost capacity into the system by December this year.

At the same time, other available options like wind energy and alternate energy were being also looked into and completion of few small hydropower projects would help increase overall generation.

In reply to a question, he said the proposed plan for free distribution of energy savers, conceived a couple of years ago, would be implemented from December this year after a lapse of many years.

He said the country relied for about 30 per cent of its power demand through hydropower projects while this ratio stood at 21 per cent in India that was also importing hydropower from its neighbouring countries.