Sindh inaugurates Thar Coal Block II Phase III, lifting output to 11.2m tonnes a year

The Sindh government on Monday inaugurated Phase III of the Thar Coal Block II project in Tharparkar, raising the mine’s annual production capacity from 7.6 million tonnes to 11.2 million tonnes, the Business Recorder reported.

Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said the expansion was completed through 100% self-financing and would bring the cost of power at the mine-mouth plant down to $3.75 per million British thermal units, about three times cheaper than electricity from imported coal. Phase III will enable Lucky Electric Power Company’s 660-megawatt plant to run entirely on Thar coal, taking total power generation from the Thar reserves to 1,980MW.

Shah said the expansion would save about Rs15 billion ($54 million) a year in power generation costs and around $220 million a year in foreign exchange, adding that the Thar project has already saved more than $1.7 billion in foreign exchange since operations began. He also said the government is considering using Thar coal to produce urea and syngas through coal gasification, and pointed to a proposed Thar Rail project to move coal across the country.

PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, who also addressed the inauguration ceremony, said Islamabad should learn from Thar’s progress, Minute Mirror reported, claiming experts once dismissed the region’s coal as useless.