Pakistan is losing out on $10 billion annually by not building its most viable multipurpose 3,600 megawatt (MW) Kalabagh Dam (KBD), which will halt the rapid depletion of the country’s most precious but finite reserves of natural gas and reduce the chances of the recurrence of massive floods in Sindh by 70 percent.
Experts say the Kalabagh Dam will be instrumental in preserving the finite gas reserves, reducing costs of electricity generation, diffusing the cost of damage incurred because of the gas shortfall that eventually unfolded, and controlling the wasteful drainage of precious irrigation water into the sea. The amount of energy that Kalabagh Dam will produce will help save 161 billion cubic feet of gas being utilised annually.
Pakistan has vast potential to tap 56,000MW of hydro-electric power out of which it has managed to utilise only 6,700MW. The Tarbela Dam, which was completed in 1997, had by December 2007 reaped benefits totaling Rs 221.902 billion for the national economy, which is more than 13.5 times the cost of the project.
After the completion of the Tarbela and Mangla dams, the next project in the pipeline was the Kalabagh Dam, which was planned to be in operation by 1993. It would have helped Pakistan save Rs 83 billion in electricity generation by replacing natural gas along with saving Rs 128.157 billion by replacing oil as a means of generating electricity by 2010. Former finance minister Dr Salman Shah told Pakistan Today that with petroleum prices hovering around $100 per barrel in the international market, Pakistan had no option but to build the Kalabagh Dam, which would have live storage capacity of 6 million acre-feet. The value of 1 million acre-feet of water translated to about $1 billion, he said, so the dam would be generating $6 billion per year. The saving from the electricity generation would be more than $4 billion per year.
The dam would help lower the petroleum import bill for power generation and transportation, which would significantly lower the trade deficit in the coming years, he said. It would increase the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by at least 3 percent per year as well, he added. “Pakistan has no option other than to aggressively opt for developing the mega hydropower projects,” he added. The dam’s construction would have effectively diffused dependence on gas in all sectors. The gas consumed by the household sector stood at 214.1 billion cubic feet and by the transport sector at 88.24 billion cubic feet by 2008-09. With the construction of the dam, the energy demands of other sectors could be met through hydroelectric power, relieving the burden on the natural gas supply. This will allow the utilisation of the natural gas reserves for a longer period of time instead of opting for costly import projects. Energy expert Arshad H Abbasi says the government has to opt for the hydroelectric power projects and especially for the Kalabagh Dam, which is the most suitable project to be completed immediately. He said the proposed Kalabagh Dam was to become operational by 1993 and its total annual production would have equaled 11,400GWH. Since the project was delayed, the energy which the dam would have supplied was met through the exploitation of gas reserves.
If the dam was operational in 1993 as had been proposed, by 2010, 2,737 billion cubic feet of gas would have been preserved. The dam was necessary even to manage floods. If it was built, it would reduce chances of recurrence of super floods in the province by 70 percent, he added. There was immediate need to develop consensus on the dam and it could be achieved by handing over the operations and maintenance of the project to Sindh, he proposed.
