Thar Coal Fields Development Clinched with $10 Billion in Energy Investments

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The development of Pakistan's resource-rich Thar coal fields in the Sindh province has been mooted for the past two decades, but is now set to become a reality, according to Dr. Samar Mubarakmand of Pakistan's Science and Technology planning commission. The coal project is scheduled to become operational in 2013, and the first 50-megawatt (MW) coal gasification project is nearing completion with an investment of $100 million.

Pakistan's coal reserves were large enough to provide electrical power to the country for the next 500 years, Mubarakmand said. Estimates have put the reserves at anything between 178 billion to 185 billion tons, but skeptics have put the figure at a low 3 billion tons, of which a significant proportion is low-quality lignite. A reduction in the higher estimates is in line with the steep downward revision of estimates on national coal reserves globally over the past century.

The Sindh government has signed four memoranda of understanding with two Chinese companies for $10 billion investments in the energy sector. The memoranda cover Thar coal-based projects, wind power and a manufacturing plant for wind turbines.

The memorandum of understanding signed with state-owned Three Gorges Corporation (Beijing, China) indicates that 1,000 MW will be from wind power, which will be erected in three phases along the coastal belt of the Thar and Badin areas.

Under the second memorandum of understanding, Thar coal reserves will feed 4,000 MW of projects. Under the third memorandum of understanding, a 300-MW project will be launched in the Sonda area of Thatta.

The fourth memorandum of understanding was signed with the Ocean Group of China (Jinan Shandong, China), which already operates in Pakistan, for a 150-MW project in the interior of Sindh.

All the memoranda of understanding were signed in Beijing, and the investments will be made in phases over the next five or six years. They were signed after the Chinese companies reviewed the viability of investing in Sindh. Infrastructure development projects already have been launched in Thar to facilitate the Sindh government's investment, in collaboration with the Pakistani federal government.

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