KESC resumes power cuts in industrial areas
“KESC has once again been deprived of the committed gas supply, which has suddenly been brought down to 60 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd),” said KESC spokesperson Aamir Abbasi.
An SSGC official confirmed that the supply of gas to KESC has been curtailed. “SSGC offtakes from various gas fields have reduced, as a result of which customers are receiving lower gas pressure and supply to KESC has also been reduced.”
The official added that work on the restoration of supply has commenced but declined to say when the gas pressure would be normalised.
Consequently, KESC resumed industrial outages on Tuesday. It has bifurcated industrial areas of the port city into two groups, turning off the lights in each zone for four hours. Korangi and adjoining industrial areas saw outages between 6pm and 10pm, while the second zone, comprising industries in Site area, remained without electricity from 10pm to 2am.
Abbasi said that on Wednesday outages will be carried out from 10am to 2pm in the first group and 2pm to 6pm in the second group. “Power outages will be carried out until supply of natural gas improves,” he said.
In mid-2009, KESC had pledged to exempt all industrial zones from power cuts. However, the company has shut off power to industries from time to time recently, on the ground of receiving lower gas supply than pledged by SSGC in the gas load management plan.
“SSGC has been cutting down gas supply to KESC to the lowest level, at least once every month or so,” complained Abbasi.
He contended that while full supply of gas approved for KESC is 276 mmcfd, its winter requirement is less than half the agreed quantity, at 110 mmcfd. “However, even this minimum quantity has not been made available consistently by SSGC,” he added.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 23rd, 2011.
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