Karachi, Pakistan, Power Ships Idle Worsen Outages

Two Turkish floating electricity power station ships lie idle off Karachi since late 2010 despite Karachi power shortage

The world’s largest power ship lies anchored off Pakistan’s energy-starved port city of Karachi, just one of its 19 chimneys puffing smoke into the sea air, reports Haris Amwar in  Blooberg Business Week news item.

The Kaya Bey and a sister vessel, whose furnace-oil generators could halve the city’s peak 600-megawatt energy shortfall, has been largely idle since the Supreme Court suspended its license amid an anti-corruption probe. Karachi’s 18 million people face another summer without the power they need to cool homes or run businesses.

The Turkish floating power station dropped anchor in November 2010 as part of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s bid to curb a nationwide power deficit that widened to 6,000 megawatts this month, or 30 percent of demand. Energy shortages, which the government says may slice 4 percentage points off economic growth in the year to June, have stirred public discontent against Gilani. Street protests and factory shutdowns are proliferating less than a year before the next general election.