Power situation: fake news must be replaced by the truth — I

This is apropos an editorial “Power situation: the real story” carried by Business Recorder on May 31, it is now imperative for the new government to find the truth in the earlier absurd claims of “economical power and no load shedding”.

Spending huge money on advertisements, claiming combined cycle power plants with “highest efficiency” (61% at sites with 45 deg C ambient and high altitude?) and then, as covered by you, we have a colossal “circular debt” of 800 billion rupees (excluding the 500 billion rupee parked in PHPL). Other than fattening the banks with huge interest payments, we have really achieved nothing in terms of affordable energy. With propaganda machinery silenced for a while, hopefully we can get the truth as to the cost of power for each kWH unit from the main power generation units. This data, based on actual fuel costs, should be made public most urgently so that those spreading fake news for so long are “pronto” held accountable.

Due to political manoeuvring, we have exposed our country’s future generations to unmanageable debts, specially because of long-term contracts for expensive LNG, with no one really sure what is the actual cost of LNG per MMBTU. How can such commercial contracts be so “secret” that no one can discuss the basis of costs? The present LNG costs will further increase due to rise in oil prices so we need to urgently enforce the efficient-use policy and ensure, by making public, the actual cost of power from each generating unit. Of course, the same requirement should cover coal-based power generating units; though no one can really project the actual cost of polluting power units since the country will really suffer tremendous environmental degradation; with even the Chinese shutting-down coal power plants from inhabited areas and now New York has also decided to shut-down all such units in the next few years!

Karachi Ainul Abedin