Pakistan, Iran to discuss additional 100MW electricity tariff for Gwadar

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Iran will hold parleys in next two weeks’ time in Tehran to negotiate a tariff for additional 100 megawatts (MW) of electricity to be imported for Gwadar and Makran, an official said on Thursday.

“Pakistan is already importing 104MW of electricity from Iran at a tariff of 7-8 cents per unit. With the import of another 100MW, the total imported electricity would jack up to 204MW,” a senior official of the Energy Ministry told The News.

Pakistan’s delegation will now go to Tehran in the next two weeks’ time for negotiating the tariff of electricity of another 100MW. However, National Transmission and Despatch Company Limited (NTDC) has completed the construction work on a 29km long, double-circuit transmission line from Polan (Iran) to Gwadar for importing an additional 100MW from Iran.

Last week, a technical delegation from Tehran came to Pakistan to test the transmission line. They went back satisfied with the performance of NTDC. “Now the phase will start for importing the electricity for which the talks would be held for the tariff of an additional 100MW.”

It is pertinent to mention that Iran had already extended an offer of exporting electricity of 3000MW to Pakistan. However, Pakistan showed interest in power purchase agreement (PPA) for the import of 1000MW of electricity, but since then, no progress was made on that front. Pakistan did sign a memorandum of understanding for the import of another 100MW of electricity.

And at that time, the feasibility study was conducted jointly by MOSHANIR (Iran) and NESPAK (Pakistan) for import of 1000MW and its report was submitted on April 26, 2010. Both parties had also agreed to construct HVDC interconnection on 500kV level with converter and switching stations at Zahedan and Quetta.

The total length of the transmission line had been worked out at around 678km out of which, 93km would be constructed in Iran and 585km was to be constructed in Pakistan. Iran was to construct a dedicated 1,300MW power plant at Zahedan for the supply of 1,000MW to Pakistan.

The total estimated cost of the transmission line project was figured out at $700 million. According to NTDC, Iran had agreed to finance 70 percent of the cost of the transmission line to be constructed on the Pakistan side whereas 30 percent will be met through NTDC' own sources.

However, the official said the project for the import of 1000MW of elasticity didn’t witness any progress.