Non-payment of Rs4 billion dues: Gas suspension to Kot Addu power plant triggers increased outages

LAHORE: Suspension of gas supply to the Kot Addu Power Plant by the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) and closure of a couple of oil-fired plants increased electricity shortfall to over 3,000MW on Saturday, forcing the distribution companies to observe loadshedding for four to six hours in urban and six to 10 hours in the rural areas across the country.

In addition to the scheduled loadshedding, distribution companies (DISCOs)—especially three in Punjab– continue to observe forced outages due to overloading of the 220kV and 500kV system of the National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC), according to an official source in the power division.

“We finally suspended gas supply—which ranges between 100 to 170MMcf daily — to 1,600MW Kot Addu Power Plant after its management failed to clear our bills amounting to Rs4bn,” SNGPL Managing Director Amjad Latif told Dawn on Saturday.

Published in Dawn, 12th August, 2018

https://www.dawn.com/news/1426464