With a precarious demand and supply crisis of power and energy causing over 16 hours of blackout in major cities and raging protests, the officials in charge are considering proposals to impose an ‘energy emergency’, which will be managed by a committee of ministers, bureaucrats and the representatives of private sector to resolve the energy problem in the next two years.
A senior official, who wished to remain anonymous, told Pakistan Today on Sunday that the idea of an energy emergency, similar to a financial or any other emergency was seriously being discussed by top officials for the last few days. He said officials were considering questions such as which law would allow imposing this emergency and if it could be done legally and constitutionally.
The proposal envisages a high-level committee comprising ministers for finance, petroleum, and water and power, senior officials of ministries concerned and major businessmen to devise a national policy on reviving the energy sector. The decisions of the committee would be binding upon everyone and would be implemented strictly.
The official said proposals were made to provide the committee immunity for its decisions because people in authority were reluctant to take decisive steps for the fear of a future backlash in a changed atmosphere and government. He believed that after getting such an immunity, the committee could speedily address the issues of rising fuel prices, gas allocations, and devise new rules for investment in the power and energy sector.
He said officials were considering these measures necessary because several lingering problems in the energy sector had remained unresolved for the last many years and that radical steps were needed to fix them permanently. He told that the officials had unanimously agreed that steps should be taken to change the fuel energy mix to water and coal resources. However, he said the major obstacles were the government’s financial constraints, red tape, and a poor law and order situation.
Hydropower projects to produce over 17,000MW electricity are ready for implementation but the government has no money to award the contracts. European companies are reluctant to venture in them because of the law and order situation and empty coffers of the fragile government. The Chinese abhor the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority’s (PPRA) rules, which they say could be implemented in a developed country and not in a third world country like Pakistan.
Chinese companies have shown interest to invest $15 billion in the hydropower projects but their major demands include negotiations on the upfront tariff and evasion from PPRA rules. They are interested in building hydropower projects on Build, Operate and Own (BOO) basis as well as on the Build, Operate, Own and Transfer (BOOT) basis.
The official said that nobody in the government was ready to take a firm stance on welcoming the Chinese and abolishing the PPRA rules, which had been introduced under pressure from the United States to keep China away from operating any mega projects in Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
He said the petroleum sector was also facing similar pressures, where the government was implementing a strategy to lessen reliance on dwindling natural gas supplies and turn consumers to alternate fuels such as the LPG and LNG.
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