Alarming Situation for Pakistan

waseemmanno

Councller (250+ posts)
ISLAMABAD: With little signs of improvement in river flows, the country may face difficulties in cotton sowing and a surge in electricity shortfalls over the next few days.

Sources in the Indus River System Authority told Dawn on Monday that because of the precarious situation of reservoirs and static river flows, Irsa had been finding it difficult to meet provincial indents for irrigation.
At present Sindh is getting about 52,000 cusecs of water against its requirement of 55,000 cusecs and Punjab 75,000 cusecs against its demand of 89,000 cusecs.
The sources said that a rise in temperature in Skardu over the next three to four days might improve river flows, but if this did not happen the provinces would be facing about 30 per cent reduction in water releases.
Irsa has informed the Punjab government that the water situation is not encouraging and it should increase discharges from Mangla dam to meet its requirement in the south for cotton sowing.
As a result, Punjab has closed its upper canals and diverted water flows to the southern region.
The sources said that the water level in the Tarbela reservoir stood at about 1,381.8 feet on Monday, only 3.8 feet above its dead level of about 1,378 feet.
They said that Irsa had increased outflows from Tarbela to 43,000 cusecs last week, increasing hydel power generation to about 3,000MW, including about 1500MW from Tarbela.
The sources said that if water flows did not improve in the Indus in three to four days, the hydel power generation would decrease by about 50 per cent to 2,000MW and the overall gap between demand and supply would go up to 4,500-5,000MW from the current 3,900MW.
Total water inflows in the Indus at Tarbela declined on Monday to about 37,300 cusecs from 43,000 cusecs. The flows in the Kabul at Nowshera stood at 24,900 cusecs and in the Jhelum at Mangla at 45,844 cusecs.
Total inflows at the rim station were recorded at 127,071 cusecs on Monday against outflows of 116,927 cusecs.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan Electric Power Company said that the overall electricity shortfall had declined to 3,921MW on Sunday.
The demand stood at 14,661MW and supply at about 10,740MW.
It said the countrys total hydropower generation stood at 2913MW.
Pepcos own thermal units generated 2,573MW and IPPs provided about 5254MW.


http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect...us-electricity-shortfall-feared-to-worsen-740
 

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