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by E. Carlo Fernando

Those who strongly promote Norachcholai say that the independent Consultant Ramboll from Demark, appointed with consent of the Bishop to review the Norachcholai project plans, has approved them and the Government should now go ahead with the project without any delay.

I was the CEB's local power development Consultant especially committed to coal power development. Since the project moved from the JCI recommended site Divulapitiya / Negombo to Norachcholai / Kalpitiya by unprofessional intrigues, I have been objecting to Norachcholai on serious technical and security grounds. My objections were frivolously ignored by those who did not have anything to do with these coal power studies at that time.

Apart from the need to resort to the cumbersome and expensive process of desalination, as practised only in desert Arab countries to solve the fresh water problem, my primary objection was against the 4.2 km long coal unloading jetty protruding into the Kalpitiya sea.

Ship to barge

Rightly the Ramboll Consultants have rejected this 4.2 km jetty. Instead a coal ship to barge transfer system has been proposed. In this process coal is to be shipped in large coal carriers from distant places like Australia. Then these coal carriers are to be anchored in deep sea near Sri Lanka and coal unloaded onto barges. These barges will be brought into a built up harbour near the power station. Here coal will have to be unloaded by pay loaders on the shore. Most of the time, during rough monsoonal weather, this process will not be operational and as a result will add on high prohibitive demurrage costs.

It should be borne in mind that when coal is mined and exported, by far the greatest component of cost exists in the transport phase of operation. The importance of reducing ship waiting and unloading times in order to maintain economical costs of energy at the final user point should be fully realized.

The Shipping Circles have found that waiting and unloading time vary between 15 and 20 percent of total round trip time. If the unloading facility is not efficient, the unloading time can greatly extend the total ship time and that increases the coal transporting costs. Unloading is traditionally a more time consuming operation than loading.

In this ship to barge arrangement all the coal carriers from distant places, like Australia, will have to be equipped with special self unloader, so all these ships will be assigned only for this particular projects, thus making the transport cost very high, as all unloaders will remain idle for about 80 percent of the round trip time. In addition these ships equipped with costly unloaders will have to be non-operative for about 4 months in the year due to rough stormy seas, thereby incurring demurrage cost, an excellent arrangement for the Shipping Companies to make money.

Indian experience

The Ramboll report states that Mersk Shipping Line operates a range of coal carriers in the South Asian region and are for instance supplying coal to a number of Indian power plants, steel plants, etc. The fact is steel plants are small coal users and they require high quality coal. There are two small coal power plants on the West Coast in South India. One is at Mangalore in the Karnataka State and to other at Tuticorin in the Kerala State fed with imported coal from Malaysia and Indonesia. What is practised there is that coal is shipped in small vessels say 1000 to 2000 ton capacities and not ship to barge transfers in mid sea.

Dhanu Thermal Power Station (2 x 250 MW) situated on the Western Coast near Mumbai was earlier importing coal from Australia adopting Ship to Barge arrangement.

However of late this import of coal has been discontinued. Some other power station of Maharastra State Electricity Board and Gujarat Electricity Board also imported coal during previous years following the same pattern. However all the above imports were hardly 20 to 25 percent of the total requirements and were used for blending with the indigenous coal to bring down the overall ash content to the required level. The ash content of Indian coal is very high.

The report mentions supplying coal to a power plant near Goa. Goa is not a town. It is a State. This power plant could either be in Goa or outside Goa in Karnataka in the south or Maharastra in the North. This only shows that those who write on this massive project proposal for Norachcholai are ignorant of the place, referred to in support of the proposal. The Shipping Companies can present distorted pictures favourable to them and not to us make business. We will have to look after ourselves.

A large coal power plant at Ennore close to Chennai (Madras) in the east coast used to get coal from North India - Orissa and Bihar - in small coal ships - sort of barges. This proved inadequate and unsatisfactory. Later this supply was discontinued when a big harbour was built to import coal from Australia. If ship to barge arrangement was feasible then why was this big harbour constructed. We plan to build a similar large coal plant, and so the ship to barge transfer arrangement at mid sea will definitely not be suitable. It is on this coal shipment issue that the Norachcholai site has to be cancelled and certainly not for any other reason.

Scrapped urea plant

In the context of my objections to set up a coal power plant at Norachcholai, let me here refer to the objections I raised against the massive Naphtha based Urea Plant at Sapugaskanda 30 years ago which eventually ended up as the scrapped urea plant. When this plant was taken up for construction in 1970, I pointed out that urea is usually made out of waste gas from petroleum wells and not with Naphtha, a very precious commodity that was to be used as feedstock in our plant. I got this matter raised even in Parliament (Sessional Paper - 1974 December 11) but this advice was ignored. It had absolutely no effect, so the project construction was taken up.

The government changed and the U.N.P. came into power. The first thing Mr. Ronnie de Mel did was to demand that the construction of the urea plant be stopped. But the construction went ahead as the government was reluctant to change what was planed.

After completion, and only when the plant started manufacturing urea at high cost, the planners realized, all too late, that urea made out of waste gas could be imported at much cheaper rates than urea made out of Naphta. Then this massive plant - 300,000 tons/year, a large one even by American standards was shut down. It was later sold for scrap value to an Indian company. This company was clever enough to dismantle and install it in an oil producing country in the Middle East utilizing the waste gas there to obtain inexpensive urea.

This Urea Plant, a massive installation, simply went down the drain. In this case after wasting a colossal amount of money, there was at least the possibility of importing urea needed for the country. However in the case of coal power plant at Norachcholai, after spending about Rs. 30,000 million and if it becomes non-operative, there will be no way of importing power even at a high cost. The result will be of severe catastrophic proportions, as mentioned in the Institution of Engineers statement on the Power Crisis 2002 published in The Island - 8th March 2002.

"Any reasonably intelligent person would see at once that Sri Lanka's nascent industries need cheap energy in order to stay competitive in the world markets. High priced, diesel fuelled power is unaffordable and if resorted to, will drive Sri Lankan products out of hard-won markets. This is inconceivable in the face of an 18 million plus population in which over 8 million survive below 'poverty line'. The Social repercussions could be a nightmare of unimaginable proportions as this is a very real, very serious crisis".

Even if a large number of the population does not have electricity in their homes, they will still need jobs in order to live. If Industrials Plants are forced to go out of business, as a result of they being compelled to price themselves out of the marketplace, widespread, deep seated discontent could manifest itself as acute disorder everywhere and especially in the Western Province.

Sadly in Sri Lanka, no one is held accountable for unprofessional and anti-national acts. Those who were responsible for such damaging actions are often elevated to high positions and placed on pedestals, where no public criticism can touch them.

To digest what I have said here, one has to cultivate "Humility" as I have already pointed out in my article "Beware of Unrealistic Power Plans" (The Island 5th March 2000). When I went to Australia in 1980, on coal power studies, the Loy Yang Coal Power Project near Melbourne was being planned. Now about 4000 MW have been installed there. Here in Sri Lanka it has taken 20 years just to realize that coal power is the only source that can solve the power crisis. I do not know how many more years will be required to realize the importance of siting the coal power plant at the correct place - sites that can provide the vital needs of the project.

There are still some in high positions talking about coal power only in 2007. The whole exercise here is like pouring water on a duck's back. Nothing penetrates. Nothing is learnt.

(The writer is a former Power Development Consultant - CEB)

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