Karachi: Pakistan’s First ever Lignite coal power project has reached 90% Completion. With a Capacity of 660 MW this project will start contributing to the national grid by Dec 2018 and is expected to start production at full capacity by May/June 2019. The Power plant has already been connected to the national power grid to receive back feed power supply.
This Project has been Undertaken by by Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC) – a Joint Venture Agreement (JVA) between Government of Sindh (GoS), Engro Energy Limited (formerly Engro Powergen Limited) and its Partners namely; Thal Limited (House of Habib), Habib Bank Limited (HBL), Hub Power Company (HUBCO) and China Machinery Engineering Corporation (CMEC). Houlinhe Open Pit Coal Mine, subsidiary of SPI (State Power International) Mengdong (SPIM), formerly CPIM, has joined the SECMC board as strategic investor with preference shares’ subscription.
During Excavation around 9 Billion Cubic Ft of water has also been discovered underground. This water is less saline than sea water and has been cleared by experts to be used in Fish farming and agriculture. EPTL has installed 12 Reverse Osmosis (RO) plants in the area to make saline water worthy of use.
Syed Murtaza Azhar Rizvi, Director Mining & Operation Engro Energy Limited said that with a rising population and an expanding economy Paksitan’s energy needs have outpaced its Energy supply. On top of that around 32% of power generation projects in Pakistan are oil based which rely heavily on imported fuel resulting in high cost of electricity and increasing stress on foreign exchange. This Coal project aims to relieve some of that stress. He added that SECMC was created with the vision “to develop a technically and commercially viable Coal Mining Project in Thar Block – II to bring energy security to Pakistan”. The total reserves of block II are sufficient to support 5000MW of energy for 50 years; enough to pull the country out of the energy crisis.
