Gwadar Power Plant at an impasse

The future of the long-stalled Gwadar power plant remains uncertain as it appears to have reached yet another impasse a year after the previous Shehbaz Sharif administration had given the go-ahead to execute the project on imported coal as originally planned. The 300-megawatt power project has failed to make any headway despite it being listed as a “fast track project” under the multi-billion dollar China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) back in 2015 on account of many reasons, including but not limited to the Covid pandemic, Pakistan’s economic and dollar liquidity problems, and overall slowdown in work on CPEC schemes. Various concepts have been discussed and shelved since its conception, including proposals to shift it on LNG and Thar coal as alternative cheaper fuels and to replace it with a solar plant of equal capacity because of fuel price considerations, as well as on social and environmental grounds.