Electricity still being produced with furnace oil

ISLAMABAD: Furnace oil based power plants continue to generate the costly electricity despite the fact that RLNG is abundantly available in the country as the intake of imported gas has increased up to between 990 mmcfd (million cubic feet per day).

The cost of electricity generated by furnace oil based power plants is Rs5 per unit costlier than that of electricity produced by RLNG power plants.

The furnace oil based power plants are operational from mid of December and since the fuel cost is a pass-through item in the electricity tariff and so the consumers will have inflated bill in current month of January and February too as the said plants are still operational.

At the moment the RLNG based power plants are getting RLNG of 350 mmcfd such as Balluki is being provided 90 mmcfd, Haveli Bahadur Shah 90 mmcd, Orient Power 31 mmcfd, and Saif Power 33 mmcfd. Bhikki RLNG power plant is non-operational because of default of SNGPL for the last 20-25 days.

However, top management of Bhikki plant has laid off some of its liability to Sui Northern and it is hoped that in the days to come RLNG supply to Bhikki will be restored. The zero-rated industry (textile, leather, carpet, sports goods and surgical) is being provided 200 mmcfd, CNG 60 mmcfd and fertilizer 70 mmcfd and the remaining 250-300 mmcfd RLNG is being injected to the domestic sector in Punjab depending upon the demand.

“At the moment, furnace oil power plants are generating 2800MW whereas RLNG based plants 2500MW and plant that run on system gas 2400MW,” top official at Power Division told The News.

“We know that system has the ability to produce the RLNG based electricity close to 8000MW, but only 2500MW is being produced which raised the eye brows of many.” The maximum electricity got generated up to 4200MW in one day in the ongoing winter season through furnace oil based power plant.

The official said that since country has the option to generate electricity on furnace oil, rather it is costlier one and it is ranked at the last in the list of economic merit order, when comparatively cheaper option of power generation on RLNG was not available and masses were suffering so Power Division opted the option of costly one to end the loadshedding in the country.