KARACHI – A $ 377 million dollars 650-megawatts Combined Cycle Bin Qasim Power Plant project of Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC), which is claimed to be completed by the next year, is going to hit a snag as the project was being developed without arrangement of gas.
Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) the prime source of gas to the company was neither been contacted nor any demand of additional gas for the same project was made by the power supplying company, sources said. As many turbines have been imported by the company while works on the project were going on, KESC has now started crying for the non-availability of gas for the project, sources said.
Under the existing gas allocation, the company was hardly running its gas based plants. The depletion of existing quantity of gas with the absence of further exploration, the arrangement of additional gas to the important project has become a challenge for the company. Though the management of KESC, as its CEO claimed, was trying to use coal as an alternate source of fuel to the upcoming project, the process would take long time and initially the plant was needed to start on gas, sources added.
During the current dialogue between KESC and government committees to restore the over 4000 sacked employees, the company has also demanded the government to arrange additional gas for the important project, they claimed. However, the representative of SSGC in a meeting held at Governor House, has made it clear that under the present shortage of gas, the gas company would not be able to provide further gas to the company.
Since June 2009, M/s Harbin, a Chinese firm was working on the long-delayed 560 MW Bin Qasim Power Plant which would cost the utility at least Rs 35 billion. According to work details as the sources said, the Environmental Monitoring Plan has been initiated. Detail Design Engineering Review was in progress while Pilling work for gas and steam turbines has been completed, foundation of GT-1 has been poured, intake and outfall channel work and fuel oil tank foundation works were in progress.
According to sources the World Bank had sanctioned at least Rs 27 billion while local banking consortium had also released for the project. The project was being financed through a combination of equity funded by shareholders, and long term loans provided by the Asian Development Bank, the International Finance Corporation, and a syndicate of Pakistani banks comprising National Bank of Pakistan, Habib Bank Limited and Standard Chartered Bank. Initial letters of credit for the project were opened by a consortium of banks including the long term lenders, Dubai Islamic Bank and Faysal Bank.
The works on the important was delayed due to the nonpayment of the mobilization charges from the public utility to the Chinese firm, since the contract for the dual-fired combined cycle plant at Bin Qasim was initially signed in June 2008 between KESC and M/s Harbin of China.
The project, started by Al-Jomaiah, the previous management, was to be completed in four phases, with the first gas turbine of the plant would start providing electricity to the KESC power network in June 2011, second in July, third in August on the open cycle mode the same year. The combined cycle operation would start in March 2012.
