ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has said it will not forego its energy options including import of gas from Iran, Qatar, and Turkmenistan in favour of US guarantees of hydroelectric power imports from Central Asia through Afghanistan.
"We are in active talks with Central Asian countries, chiefly Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, while the US is assisting us but the power imports will not be mutually exclusive with our other options including the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline Project," Mukhtar Ahmed, adviser to the Pakistani prime minister on energy said in an interview yesterday.
"It is true that we are having bilateral US help, and also that multilateral institutions like the Asian Development Bank are assisting us to import electricity but all these projects are complementary to each other," he added.
Ahmed said that translated into electric power units roughly 2bn cubic feet gas flowing in through the proposed gas pipeline from Iran would mean 10,000 MW. "Therefore," he maintained, "keeping in view the energy requirement of Pakistan's growing economy all the options of pursuit would be equally important besides being mutually exhaustive rather than mutually exclusive."
Ahmed also said that Pakistan had resolved at the apex level to go ahead with the implementation of mega-hydroelectric projects doing away with the obstacles of all natures including that of political, technical and environmental.
He ruled out the impression that the government had abandoned the idea of medium-size dam construction through the public-private partnership.
"Obviously the major projects would be done in the public sector while the private sector would also be involved in the medium-size and small hydel energy projects," he maintained.
The Private Power Infrastructure Board is actively working on the programme of public-private partnership for medium-size dams, he added.
Ahmed was of the view that the government in complete recognition of the increasing gap between energy demand and supply was actively pursuing comprehensive energy procurement as well as energy security plans.
Other than oil, gas and power the government has been striving to bring the coal in the focus of exploration to make it a reasonable part of the country's primary energy mix, he said.
"At the time of Pakistan's creation the coal was contributing 60% of the energy mix while now its share has squeezed to merely 7% for growth in other resources and stagnation in the coal development field," he added.
Moreover, he said, the nuclear energy and also the alternative sources of energy, mainly wind-power, were under equivalent focus of the govt's energy security plan.
Talking about the state of strategic oil reserves of the country, he said, the govt was working with the industry and also in collaboration with the multilateral institutions to establish independent and permanent storage capacity for total liberalisation after the privatisation of state-owned Pakistan State Oil and other state entities.
According to the adviser, the project of developing the exhausted reserves into underground gas storage capacity with the help of the ADB was also fast heading to success. – Internews

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