PM to visit Thar coal field tomorrow

• Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will visit the Thar coalfield
• Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah will also accompany
• He has called for linking Thar coal mines with railway network by March 2023

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will arrive in Sindh on a day-long visit tomorrow (Monday) to inspect the Thar coalfield, BOL News reported.

Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah and Foreign Minister Billawal Bhutto Zardari are also expected to accompany the prime minister.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif chaired a meeting and directed the authorities concerned to link the Thar Coal Mines with the country’s railway network by March 2023.

During a meeting, it was decided that the project would be jointly executed by the federal and Sindh governments. In this regard, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in Islamabad.

PM Shehbaz Sharif said with the linking of Thar Coal Mines with railway network, local coal would be used in power plants replacing the imported ones. He said the usage of Thar coal in power plants would help save $2 billion annually.

The meeting was told that after the linking of Thar Coal Mines with rail network, the local coal would be utilized not only the power plants of Jamshoro and Port Qasim but also other power plants and industries in the country to save the public money.

The prime minister instructed the authorities concerned to accelerate the work on the said project to complete it by March 2023.

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On October 1, Pakistan successfully launched a third power plant with capacity of 330 megawatts on the indigenous Thar coal. The total installed power production capacity increased to 990 megawatts on Thar coal in three years.

Power production on Thar coal stands as the third cheapest source among as many as 124 plants operating on various fuels including gas, RLNG and oil in the country.

Pakistan has 175 billion tonnes of coal reserves in Tharparkar, equivalent to 50 billion tonnes of oil equivalent (TOE) which is more than Saudi Arabian and Iranian oil reserves. The reserves equal to 2,000 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of gas which is 68 times higher than Pakistan’s total gas reserves.

Thar coal can meet Pakistan’s electricity demand for several centuries and can also be used for other purposes such as the fertilizer industry.