China to Build Dam in Pakistan’s Northern Area: Khaleej Times

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan and China have signed a memorandum of understanding for construction of Bunji dam in Northern Areas that will produce 7000 megawatt power.

The agreement was signed by Saleem Mandviwala on behalf of Pakistan’s Ministry of Water and Power and Yang’an, Chairman of China’s Three Gorges Project Corporation. The ceremony was also attended by President Asif Ali Zardari, who is currently visiting China.

Earlier, addressing a business forum in Zhejiang, President Zardari offered transit facility to Chinese companies, saying Pakistan’s ports would benefit Chinese firms by giving them easy access to outside world. He sought Chinese assistance in hydel, thermal and solar power generation and invited Chinese companies to carry out feasibility studies.

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Water comes to the rescue in northern Pakistan: The National

Tom Hussain, Foreign Correspondent

KARIMABAD, PAKISTAN // Residents of Pakistan’s northern valleys are harnessing the natural might of glacial melt to generate electricity in their remote communities, and local officials hope that further hydroelectric projects in the area will have the potential to alleviate the country’s growing energy crisis.

The five districts of the so-called Northern Areas, known historically as Gilgit-Baltistan, are isolated from the rest of Pakistan by the formidable natural buffer formed by the Himalaya, Karakorum and Hindu Kush mountain ranges.

The snow-capped region of Alpine valleys has been the source of romantic inspiration for writers for a century, even being touted as the home of the mythical Shangri la in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton.

However, development workers active in the area said such fairy tales mask the sad truth: until the completion of the Karakorum Highway (KKH), a narrow 1,300-km road between Islamabad and the Chinese border in 1978, its communities were undernourished because of the tremendous difficulties in channelling water for irrigation, and frequently fell victim to cholera because of contamination of the water they did obtain from glacial streams.

A poignant example is the hamlet of Murtazabad in the Hunza Valley, which for some 100 years was the setting for an epic struggle between the community and the sheer, unstable slopes down which cascaded the water they needed.

Veterans of the struggle to tame a 100-metre-long natural channel have passed down stories of how, time and again, the efforts of men working without the skills or tools of modern engineering were frustrated and killed by the temperamental terrain, said Naeem-ud-Din Dinal, a development consultant with the Karakorum Area Development Organisation, an NGO.

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Pakistan approves big new dam project: Radio Austrailia

The Pakistan government has approved the building of 12 billion US dollar dam on the Indus river in the north of the country.

Water minister Raja Pervez Ashraf says the new Basha dam will produce 4,500 megawatts of electricity as part of efforts to overcome Pakistan's acute power shortage.

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AEDB to produce 5,000MW energy: Dawn

ISLAMABAD, Nov 10: Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB) has planned to produce 5,000MW energy within five to seven years utilising renewable energy resources available in the country.

This generation would certainly help meeting the current energy shortfall, Chief Executive Officer AEDB Arif Allaudin said talking to journalists here on Monday after conclusion of inaugural session of two-day stakeholders’ consultative workshop on ‘development of medium-term renewable energy policy for Pakistan’, jointly organised by AEDB and Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The CEO said the board is planning to make medium-term and long-term policy in consultation with concerned stakeholders. He said the board has been assigned by the government with the target of producing 5 per cent energy from renewable resources out of total power generation capacity.

He said the country’s first 50MW wind power project is scheduled to be commissioned in next month. He added five turbines of 1.2MW capacity each would be installed in the first phase of the project.

He said tariff issue will be resolved in consultation with stakeholders and people will get cheaper electricity. He said in an effort to harness the renewable energy resources, AEDB is encouraging private sector to develop renewable energy power projects.Earlier addressing the participants of the workshop, CEO AEDB said that country is facing an energy crisis, adding the board would fully utilise the alternative energy resources available in the country.

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Six hydropower projects to be initiated by 2010: The News

Friday, October 31, 2008
By our correspondent

LAHORE: In addition to initiating construction work on the 4,500 MW Diamer-Basha Dam Project next year, another half dozen mega hydropower projects including Kohala, Dasu, Bunji, Munda, Palas Valley would be undertaken in 2010-12.

This was stated by WAPDA Chairman Shakil Durrani during a briefing here at WAPDA House today arranged for a delegation of the 89th Management Course of National School of Public Policy, Lahore led by its Rector Lt. Gen. (R) Javed Hassan. These projects would generate about 21,000 MW of electricity on their completion and help improve low-cost hydropower proportion in the national grid.

The delegation was briefed that Pakistan has been blessed with the identified hydropower potential of more than 54,000 MW but only 16 per cent of this potential has so far been taped due to variety of reasons.

After its bifurcation last year, WAPDA is fully focused on water and hydropower development. The work on 969 MW Neelum-Jhelum Hydroelectric Project has already started, while feasibility studies and detailed engineering designs of most of the mega projects in both water and power sectors are currently at the advance stages and likely to be completed by the next year,

The delegation was informed that Pakistan is storing only 11 per cent of the annual water flows of its rivers and, if this capacity is not increased, Pakistan will be a water short country by 2012. The delegation was told that the accumulative gross storage capacity of Tarbela, Mangla and Chashma reservoirs that originally used to be 18.37 million acre feet (MAF), has reduced to 13.24 MAF due to sedimentation, resulting in 28 per cent loss of storage capacity.

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Pakistan plans USD 12.4 billion investment in power sector: Steel Guru

Daily Times reported that Pakistan is eying USD 12.4 billion investment in the power sector to generate 13,335MW power by 2016.

Sources said that Pakistan's government is encouraging the private sector to make investment in the power sector and is hoping that the private sector would invest USD 12.4 billion by 2016 on the 51 power projects that are under process by Private Power Infrastructure Board.

According to the power projects under process in PPIB, the focus is being laid on the hydel power generation and as many as 20 hydel power projects would be operational that would generate 4,478MW power by 2016. In the said sector, first project would start generating hydel power of 84MW in the year 2011 and three additional power projects would be added to hydel power generation that would generate 332MW by 2012.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Pakistan plans USD 12.4 billion investment in power sector: Steel Guru

Pakistan to get $1.4bn WB loan, ADB to give $810m: Daily Times

* $1bn WB loan to have 17% interest
* ADB funds for power projects

ISLAMABAD: The World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Programme (ADP) will give Pakistan $1.4 billion and $810 million in loans, respectively.

The WB's $1.4 billion lending programme will support development in various sectors during the current fiscal 2008-09 year, a senior official in the Economic Affairs Division told Daily Times on Wednesday. He said anonymously that the lending programme consisted of $1 billion loan under the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and $400 million loan under the International Development Association's (IDA) country assistance programme.

Interest: He said the $1 billion IBRD loan would be provided on market rate, elaborating that market rate loans had an interest rate of 17 percent. He added that the $400 million IDA loan would be a soft loan, which is likely to have one percent interest rate, and would be for technical assistance.

Sources in the Finance Ministry say Pakistan is facing problems to return WB loans as there is a condition that they will be returned in any currency (dollor or euro), which has a higher value.

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Work on most hydropower projects to start next year: The News

Friday, July 04, 2008
By our correspondent

LAHORE: The Water and Power Development Authority is striving for optimal exploitation of hydropower potential to cope with increasing demand of electricity in the country.

WAPDA Chairman Shakil Durrani stated this during a visit to project sites of Diamer-Basha dam, Dasu, Pattan and on-going three high-head hydropower projects namely Khan, Allai and Dubair Khwar on Thursday.

According to a statement issued here, the WAPDA chairman said nature had blessed Pakistan with the potential of generating more than 54,000 megawatts of hydel electricity.

With a view to injecting low-cost electricity into the national grid, WAPDA was working on feasibility studies and detailed engineering designs of a number of hydropower projects with accumulative capacity of about 25,000MW including Kohala (1,100MW), Bunji (5,400MW) and Dasu (4,000MW), he added.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Work on most hydropower projects to start next year: The News