Karachi : Much to the disenchantment of residents of the city, the Karachi Electric Supply Company announced on Wednesday evening to increase the loadshedding duration in the city to up to nine hours a day as the promised facility of additional furnace oil at the price of gas had not been extended to it.
“The Karachi Electric Supply Company has been informed by the PSO that the state-run oil company had not received any instruction or notification from the federal government for supply of additional furnace oil under Gas Load Management Programme (GLMP) in lieu of the massive curtailment of gas supply to KESC,” said a KESC statement.
The announcement of extended loadshedding in the city came at a time when a large number of students were preparing for the upcoming SSC and HSSC annual examinations, and the long duration of power failure would hit them the hardest.
The KESC had announced on Tuesday that the feared situation of up to 14 hours power loadshedding a day due to reduced gas supply during the annual maintenance of Bhit gas had been avoided as the KESC was to receive additional furnace oil at the price of gas under a government subsidy of one billion rupees.
But, according to a spokesman for the KESC on Wednesday, the facility of additional furnace oil on discounted rates was no more available to the company, and that the Pakistan State Oil was now saying that the power utility should purchase the furnace oil at full price.
It was decided in meetings at the Chief Minister’s House and the Governor’s House last week that the KESC would get 60,000 metric tonnes of additional furnace oil under the GLMP during the Bhit Annual Turnaround outage period starting from April 12, said the KESC statement.
The SSGC had also assured the KESC of 120 MMCFD gas required for the gas-fired power generation units after closure of Bhit Gas Fields, but the gas utility had been supplying just 100 MMCFD of gas since Tuesday morning.
At the same time a low gas pressure had been causing frequent tripping of KESC’s generation units that took several hours to come back on at full capacity.
The KESC statement said that since different organizations had reneged on their commitments, the KESC was left with no other option but to increase the loadshedding duration in the city for its residential, commercial and industrial customers for up to nine hours a day with immediate effect.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Pakistan State Oil said that it had already informed the KESC that its furnace oil supply quota had been increased from 33,000 to 50,000 metric tonnes on monthly basis.
The credit line available to the KESC for procuring furnace oil could also be increased from Rs1.7 billion to Rs3 billion.
“On Wednesday we supplied the normal furnace oil supply to the KESC under our oil agreement with the power utility, but supply of additional furnace oil to the KESC is no longer possible for the PSO in the absence of any written assurance or notification from the government in this regard,” said the PSO spokesperson.
The state-run oil company on Tuesday had provided 2,000 metric tonnes of furnace oil to the KESC under the fuel supply agreement between the two entities.
Moreover, an additional quantity of 3,000 metric tonnes furnace oil had also been provided to the KESC on subsidized rates (equivalent to gas price) since Monday night.
She said the PSO receivables now stood at Rs172 billion, and the oil company had yet to recover last year’s subsidy amount it extended to the KESC, and it was not possible for the PSO to extend the facility of subsidized furnace oil supply to the
KESC any further on the basis of any verbal assurance or commitment from the authorities. Meanwhile, the KESC spokesman said that as the decision to extend the duration of loadshedding was taken in the evening, the company could not yet announce a detailed plan of extended loadshedding for various residential, commercial and industrial areas in the city, but it was for sure that the industrial areas could face up to eight hours of loadshedding daily.
