Musharraf asks Pak Electric to meet demand-supply

Islamabad: President Pervez Musharraf on Friday directed Pakistan Electric Company (Pepco) to bring in all possible resources to plug the gap between power demand and supply. He issued the direction to Pepco Chief Munawwar Baseer during a presentation on the last power production and supply situation.

Munawwar Baseer told the President that electricity production had increased substantially and as on February 7 total gap in demand and supply stood at 2500 MW. This gap was 4500 MW on January 6 this year. The presentation covered short, medium and long-term measures to enhance electricity production from different sources to meet the rising demand in the near future.

The President was informed that that from the first week of February onward electricity production ranged between 9500 and 10,500 MW against the demand of 11000 and 12500 MW, showing a shortfall between 2000 to 2500 MW per day.

According to the presentation, from the first week of February, electricity production stood at 10500 MW during peak and 9500 MW during non-peak hours. The President was informed that Pakistan was hit by the worst-ever power crisis in the last week of December in 2007, after countrywide riots erupted in the wake of PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto's assassination and its partial effect was still exiting.

The President was also apprised of the progress of different under- completion power generation projects, including Nandipur and Chichokimulian, besides some rented projects, completed or being completed by the private sector.

He was told that repair of damaged transmission lines and towers of some IPP's power projects, including Hubco had added around 4000 MW electricity for the system during the last one month and efforts were under way for bringing some other projects to the completion stage ahead of schedule.

Gas-fired Guddo power project would be its typical example. The President was informed that Guddo project would be ready to add 110 MW to the system in July, one month ahead of its schedule. Two more oil-fired power projects in Faisalabad and Multan would be ready for production by the end of the current calendar year. The Pepco chief said some other projects were also being completed on fast track to add substantial supply to ease rising demand pressure and the situation would be much better by the end of December 2008.

He added that by the end of the current calendar year, shortage in power demand and supply would be only 1000 MW and it would be easily manageable by short duration loadshedding. He was of the view that loadshedding duration was not more than three to four hours and it would reduce considerably with coming in of more supply in the next few months.