Despite lack of energy for citizens, Burma one of region's biggest
energy exporters
If any official confirmation were
needed, the Asian Development Bank , in a new draft report, has painted a
gloomy picture of Burma’s electricity system, a key element of the country’s
desired development.
Only 26 percent of Burma’s 60
million people have access to mains electricity and yet the country is “one of
the five major energy exporters in the region, particularly natural gas,” said
the bank.
The energy grid, the Bank said,
is inadequate and failing due to a multitude of problems including poor
maintenance, ill-trained staff, an absence of planning and crippling
bureaucracy in which eight different government ministries are involved in
making decisions. There is thus an urgent need to streamline responsibility for
energy and to draw up medium-to-long term planning strategies.
The already limited power network
is so old and poorly maintained that it “suffers from high transmission and
distribution losses that need to be addressed urgently,” the ADB says as it
prepares to re-engage the country with financial and technical assistance. The
ADB opened in office in Rangoon in August after an absence of 24 years. The
country owes the ADB $500 million dating back to 1988 when the military regime
stopped debt repayment.
“Supply options have to be
assessed for power, petroleum, coal and other sources of energy, including
investment requirements for meeting growing energy demand,” said the report.
“Despite sitting on huge energy resources [Burma] has one of the lowest
commercial per capita consumptions in Southeast Asia. This low energy demand is
due to its low per capita income and insufficient energy infrastructure.”
The inadequacy of Burma’s
electricity supply and distribution as the country starts to expand
economically was highlighted in the middle of this year when thousands of
people in Rangoon and Mandalay paraded peacefully through the streets at night
carrying lit candles.
The ADB report says Burma’s
installed electricity generating capacity is higher than previously estimated,
at 3,361 megawatts (MW).
A unit of 1 MW in fulltime
operation will power around 1,000 homes for one year.
However, Burma’s full generating
capacity is never achieved due to a catalogue of technical and other problems.
These include natural gas pipelines which feed several power plants being so
poorly maintained that insufficient compression reduces efficiency; dilapidated
transmission cables and transformers; and reduced power from hydro-electric
systems when water levels are low.
Thailand with a similar-sized
population has a generating capacity of 26,000 MW reaching into most remote
rural areas of the country. Almost 70 percent of that capacity is fuelled by
natural gas and around one-third of Thailand’s annual gas demand is imported
from Burma.
Around 75 percent of Burma’s overall
electricity capacity is generated from hydropower, 21 percent from gas, and
four percent from coal.
The hydropower potential from
Burma’s rivers is more than 100,000 MW and 92 large scale projects with a total
installed capacity of 46,101 MW have been identified, the report said.
Proven gas reserves total 11.8
trillion cubic feet with “huge potential” for more. Burma also has an estimated
at 489 million metric tons of coal and produced 692,000 tons in 2011 but,
amazingly, over 65 percent of the primary energy consumption in the country
comes from biomass fuels such as wood, charcoal and agricultural waste.
The ADB said the Ministry of
Energy plans to construct 13 hydropower plants with a total capacity of 2,570
MW by 2020, but many more were planned by foreign investors. Four coal-fuelled
and one gas-fuelled plant are planned in the next two years in the greater
Rangoon region with a total of around 2,200 MW of capacity.
South Korean and Japanese
companies are reportedly involved in these.
“A 600 MW coal-fired plant is
going to cost at least US $700 million and most probably more like $850 million
if it has best-case anti-pollution technology,” Bangkok-based energy industries
analyst Collin Reynolds told The Irrawaddy on Monday. “The cost will be higher
for a similar-sized gas-fired plant.
“Gas would seem to be Burma’s
best longer-term energy source for power generation and in the short term coal
systems would be quicker and avoid the need for new gas pipeline
infrastructure,” he added.
“Hydrodam systems are costly,
have slower development time frames and their delivery capacity will be
seasonal and affected by climate. To Burma’s north in China’s Yunnan there have
been long periods of power shortages caused by drought bringing hydroplants to
a standstill.”
The ADB is recommending that the
Burmese government should “review” the pricing structures for electricity and
fuel oils and consider privatising eight state-owned energy enterprises.
The assessment of Burma’s energy
problems and possible solutions is part of a wide-ranging study carried out by
the ADB since early this year in preparation for what it terms a fully-fledged
country partnership strategy for development.
The report also assessed
transport, water supply, poverty levels, environment, regional integration,
economic reform and education.
However, the ADB underlines its
insistence that before any grant-based technical and other assistance can be
provided there must be a settlement of debts still owed to the bank by Burma.
“The ADB is working with the
[Burmese] authorities and other creditors on the arrears clearance as part of
an international multi-party effort to assist [Burma] to regain access to
international financial resources”—basically in order to benefit from all ADB
programs, ranging from public and private sector financing and planning to
environmentally sustainable rural development and tackling HIV/AIDS.
William Boot, The Irrawaddy
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