An impractical project
The electricity import project from Central Asia was just plain absurd, and somebody should have said so.
PHOTO: PPI/FILE
In retrospect, it was inevitable. The Asian Development Bank’s decision to pull its funding from the project to link Pakistan’s electricity grid with that of Central Asia should come as no surprise to anyone. The project is doomed to failure and does not, in any way, constitute a realistic plan to help Pakistan overcome its energy crisis.
The reason this plan was dreamed up in the first place was because Washington wanted Islamabad to pursue alternatives to the Iran-Pakistan pipeline and the diplomats at the US State Department dreamed up a scheme that would have looked absurd even if proposed at a high school Model UN conference. Do not buy gas from Iran, they said, and we will make sure that you can import cheap electricity from Central Asia. Never mind that the wires would have to cross through unstable Afghanistan and that the Central Asian states are poor now, but will soon have expanding economies that will need that electricity for themselves.
The debate on whether or not the Iran-Pakistan pipeline is advisable is a separate one. But the electricity import project from Central Asia was just plain absurd and rather than wasting the time of international lenders, somebody at the water and power ministry should have had the good sense to say so. Why this was not done is beyond understanding.
Instead, Pakistan was made to look a fool for pursuing a nonsensical idea that was cooked up by American diplomats who have yet to come up with a straightforward answer to a simple question: why should Pakistan not import hydrocarbons from one of its neighbouring countries that has one of the largest surpluses of natural gas in the world? Because the United States has some ill-defined animosity towards Tehran? That does not seem to be a good enough reason for Pakistan to put the growth of its entire economy — and the future of its estimated 190 million people — on hold. Washington may not care about them, but Islamabad should have had better sense.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 9th, 2013.
The reason this plan was dreamed up in the first place was because Washington wanted Islamabad to pursue alternatives to the Iran-Pakistan pipeline and the diplomats at the US State Department dreamed up a scheme that would have looked absurd even if proposed at a high school Model UN conference. Do not buy gas from Iran, they said, and we will make sure that you can import cheap electricity from Central Asia. Never mind that the wires would have to cross through unstable Afghanistan and that the Central Asian states are poor now, but will soon have expanding economies that will need that electricity for themselves.
The debate on whether or not the Iran-Pakistan pipeline is advisable is a separate one. But the electricity import project from Central Asia was just plain absurd and rather than wasting the time of international lenders, somebody at the water and power ministry should have had the good sense to say so. Why this was not done is beyond understanding.
Instead, Pakistan was made to look a fool for pursuing a nonsensical idea that was cooked up by American diplomats who have yet to come up with a straightforward answer to a simple question: why should Pakistan not import hydrocarbons from one of its neighbouring countries that has one of the largest surpluses of natural gas in the world? Because the United States has some ill-defined animosity towards Tehran? That does not seem to be a good enough reason for Pakistan to put the growth of its entire economy — and the future of its estimated 190 million people — on hold. Washington may not care about them, but Islamabad should have had better sense.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 9th, 2013.