The provincial government resolved on Tuesday to build a railway track from the Thar coalfields to the main railway line in order to deliver coal to other enterprises and power plants.
The TCEB’s 25th meeting, which was presided over by Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, is where the decision to this effect was made.
Federal Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal, Energy Minister Imtiaz Sheikh, Minister of Mines and Minerals Shabbir Bijarani, Minister of Education Sardar Shah, Legal Adviser Murtaza Wahab, Secretary of Energy Abubakr Madani, TCEB MD Khadim Hussain Channa, and other relevant officials all attended the meeting at the CM House.
Imtiaz Shaikh, the energy minister, informed the gathering that the Shanghai Electric Company’s power plants, which produce 1,320MW of electricity, were receiving coal from the Thar Coal Block-1.
The chief minister claimed that Benazir Bhutto’s ambition of producing electricity from Thar coal has come true. He continued, “The Sindh administration has fulfilled its leader’s dream.
It was determined at the conference to build the railway track connecting Main Line (ML) to Thar Coal Field.
After the railway route is built, Thar coal will be supplied to additional power plants and cement manufacturers, according to the chief minister. “Supplying coal by trucks would be like destroying the roads of the area,” he continued.
The committee also approved Thar Coal Block-II’s mine development and an increase in production from Coal Block-I’s 7.6 MTPA to 11.2 MTPA.
The coal from Thar Coal Block-II would be provided to an electricity generating firm in Port Qasim, the energy minister said the audience.
At the board meeting, the levelized tariffs of $37.36 per tonne for the petition at the financial closure stage for Block I’s 7.8 MTPA and $30.40 for the petition at the contract stage for Block II’s 11.2 MTPA were accepted.
Imtiaz Shaikh, the energy minister, gave the chief minister an update on the progress made by the Thar coalfields’ Sino-Sindh Resources Ltd. and Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company.
He said that the mines were already set up to increase coal production from their current rate of 15.4 MTPA to 19 MTPA over the course of the following 18 months. The idea was accepted by the board.
The meeting attendees were informed that the 2,640 megawatts of electricity generated by the mines and used to power more than seven million homes in the Thar coalfields.
The Thar coalfields also have some of the lowest power generation costs in the nation, and the electricity produced there is substantially less expensive than coal imported from abroad.
Additionally, it increases energy security and conserves the nation’s valuable foreign exchange reserves.
It was emphasised during the presentation that as the mines expanded, the overall cost of production continued to fall, partly as a result of the mines achieving “economies of scale” (production efficiency).
The coal tariff is anticipated to decrease further as mines achieve higher economies of scale, which will also lead to a decrease in the cost of generating energy from mine-mouth power plants situated on Thar coalfields.
It should be remembered that the tariff will continue to decrease as long as the miners continue to expand their production.
The TCEB chairman commended the board management’s efforts in resolving five tariff petitions over the past few months and in starting stakeholder dialogue meetings to broaden the utilization of Thar coalfields beyond power generation.