Pakistan to generate electricity through its first gasification plant

Pakistan's first gasification plant will start generating low cost electricity from next year, said the head of the Thar Coal Underground Gasification Project, Dr. Samar Mubarakmand in an official press release on Wednesday. "The current government has released the second tranche of 10 percent of the plan enabling us to work on fast track in all important low-cost electricity generating project," said the renowned scientist and the Coordinator General of Thar Coal Project who participated in an international conference in China. "If all goes well, we will be able to demonstrate electricity generated from gasification by October-November next year," he added. The scientist also visited six cities in China where coal mines are located, and inspected the factory where the state of the art Horizontal drilling machine - an important component of gasification project - was being manufactured. Thar Coal mines are constituted of 13 series of mountains blessed with rich treasure of coal and the government has allocated block V in Thar to Dr. Mubarakmand for this important project. Dr. Mubarakmand said that he had invited gasification experts from Uzbekistan and China to Pakistan. The coal gas will be transported to booming provinces of Zhejiang in east China and Guangdong in the south through pipelines, according to the research paper by Dr. Mubarakmand submitted in the conference. The area has estimated coal reserves of 390 billion tones and proven reserves of 213.6 billion tones, the largest coalfield in China. Pakistan has been facing an energy shortage that could be reduced once the Thar project starts producing electricity from coal through underground gasification