The Nandipur plant

The much-hyped over Rs57 billion Nandipur Thermal Power Plant of 425MW capacity is going to cost the exchequer even more. Resultantly, tariff – so far the country’s highest ever (the plant generated electricity for a few days at an average cost of Rs42 per kWh) – will increase further. The government has decided to use Regasified Liquefied Natural Gas (RLNG) as primary fuel for the plant. For this purpose Rs5,732 million has been allocated in the PSDP for FY2015-16. The project originally planned to use natural gas as main fuel and residual fuel oil (RFO) as alternate. However, it was later decided to convert gas turbines on RFO as primary fuel and high speed diesel (HSD) as standby.
The project, launched in January 2008, has a chequered history. Nawaz Sharif inaugurated it in May 2014. Its first turbine was to start commercial operations by March this year but the plant has yet to come on stream, reportedly due to technical problems. Its three turbines are still being run on trial. Now that the turbines will be converted to RLNG, the existing guarantees and warranties of these turbines would no longer be valid to the advantage of the original supplier. From all this it is evident that the government has no vision and no planning whatsoever to manage power generation.
Hussain Siddiqui
Islamabad