The federal government has cleared the country’s first two re-gasified Liquefied Natural Gas-fired power plants, with a combined generation capacity of 2400 megawatts, at an estimated cost of Rs.169.6 billion in efforts to reduce long hours of power outages.
The government has an initial estimate that each project will cost Rs84.8 billion including a Rs68.1-billion loan that will be arranged from China.
Headed by Federal Minister for Planning and Development, Ahsan Iqbal, the CDWP constituted the committee that will be comprised of member Energy, Member Infrastructure of Planning Commission, and representatives of Ministry of Water and Power and Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited.
Both combined cycle power plants will be set up in Punjab. One is located at Balloki, District Kasur and the second one is located at Haveli Bahadur Shah, District Jhang.
After spending energy resources on planning to setup coal-based power plants, the government has lately decided to focus on LNG, arguing that LNG was cheaper fuel and would comparatively consume less time in implementation. The Planning Ministry said that both the projects will be completed within two years.
The government plans to finance these power plants from the Public Sector Development Programme. However, the initial indicative ceiling of Rs580 billion for the next year’s PSDP suggests that the envelope would not be sufficient to carry out work on over a 1,000 projects including these cost-intensive schemes.
The CDWP took up 30 development projects, valuing around Rs300 billion, said the Ministry of Planning.
