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KARACHI: Despite getting furnace oil on subsidised rates from Pakistan State Oil, the Karachi Electric Supply Company extended daily loadshedding up to nine hours for all types of consumers with immediate effect on Wednesday in an apparent attempt to press the government for more concessions. A KESC spokesperson said the power utility had been informed by the PSO that it had not received any communication from the federal government to supply additional furnace oil under the gas load management programme (GLMP) in lieu of the curtailed gas supply to the KESC.
It was decided at Chief Minister’s House and Governor’s House meetings that the KESC would get 60,000 tonnes of additional furnace oil under the GLMP during the Bhit annual turnaround outage.
On the other hand, the Sui Southern Gas Company had assured the KESC of supplying a reduced quantity of 120 million cubic feet daily of gas, required for gas-fired units after the closure of the Bhit gas fields for annual repairs, but instead it had been supplying just 100MMCFD of gas since Tuesday morning.
At the same time low gas pressure was causing frequent tripping to the KESC’s generation units that took several hours to come back online at full capacity.
This was in contravention of the Sindh High Court’s order to supply a minimum of 200MMCFD, the KESC claimed.
“In view of the failure of all these commitments, KESC has been left with no other option but to enhance load shedding duration in the city for its residential, commercial, and industrial customers for up to nine hours daily with immediate effect,” it said.
The PSO had earlier stated that if the government did not transfer the promised Rs1 billion to it for providing oil to the KESC at subsidised rate, it would not continue the rebated supply.
A spokesperson for the PSO said on Wednesday that the oil company had not stopped supplies to the power utility despite the fact that the PSO had not yet received anything in writing from the government about the payment of Rs1 billion.
The spokesperson said that on Tuesday the PSO had supplied 3,000 tonnes of oil on subsidised rate under the GLMP.
The oil company had a fuel supply agreement with the KESC for 33,000 tonnes a month. This limit had been enhanced to 50,000 tonnes together with the credit line.
But the KESC was not uplifting it and was insisting on the continuation of supply under the GLMP.
The PSO’s contention was that it had not yet recovered the amount of previous incidence on the GLMP while the entity was under severe financial strain with Rs172 billion outstanding dues.
There had to be business viability of any proposition, the PSO spokesperson said, adding that if the KESC was really concerned about Karachiites, it could reduce loadshedding by uplifting oil under the enhanced FSA regime.
According to sources, the PSO managing director would meet Sindh governor Dr Ishratul Ibad Khan, possibly with KESC and SSGC representatives, on Thursday.
