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Mangla outflows made zero

Posted on: Tue January 12, 2010

ISLAMABAD: The power crisis has worsened as the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) has reduced the Mangla water outflows to zero for the next 10 days extendable for the next five days, which is why the hydrogenation has tumbled from average 500MW to 300MW, a senior official at the Punjab Irrigation and Power Department told The News. This would lead to close to 4,000MW of electricity deficit that would increase the power outages more than 17 hours, the official at Pakistan Electric Power Company told this scribe. Yes, we have zeroed the water releases from Mangla reservoir in the wake of demand of the Punjab government as it wants to increase the level of water in the said dam so that Punjab could effectively use the stored water in late January or in February at the optimum level to meet the irrigational requirements, Idrees Khalid Rana, spokesman for Irsa confirmed to The News.He said that right now the water stored at Mangla Dam stands at 0.3 million acre feet of which the authorities concerned want to increase up to 0.5 to 0.6 MAF so that the task of two to three times watering of Rabi crops could be done amicably which seems not easy keeping in view the ongoing drought. If the drought continues, the official at the Punjab agriculture department said wheat crops production will face 15 to 20 per cent deficit and more than 80 per cent wheat sown in the Barani areas would be affected.When contacted, Mohammad Khalid DG Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) said with 100 per cent closure of Mangla outflows, there is a negligible impact as earlier the system was getting 77MW from Mangla which had 0.7 per cent share in the generation of 9,056MW against the demand of 11,956MW. He said Pepco on Monday extended 530MW of electricity to KESC.

Courtesy : The News