Engro Powergen Thar Limited (EPTL) has claimed that a recent explosion has not caused any major damage to its plant as its long-term reliability in intact.

The EPTL is a 2 X 330 MW power plant operating in Thar, Sindh. The company is the first power plant to operate on indigenous Thar coal and has been providing low-cost power to the national grid since its commissioning in July 2019. Since the commencement of commercial operations, EPTL has generated 11 billion units of electricity from Thar Coal which have resulted in Forex Saving of $350 million versus imported coal to date.

CEO, EPTL, Syed Manzoor Hussain Zaidi, in a letter has updated the Federal Government on accident in ETPL’s power plant last week, i.e., March 2, 2022.

He further noted that on March 2, 2022 at 1700 an explosion occurred in the conveyor belts of the coal handling system which feeds coal into the power plant. One of the units was already under scheduled outage while the other unit was operational. However, after the incident, safety and emergency response teams were activated, and the remaining part of the complex was also shutdown.

Due to the incident, 5 people were affected who were provided medical attention immediately and all of them are safe and stable. An investigation team comprising of local and foreign technical experts is already in place to identify the root cause of the incident, he added.

According to Zaidi, although the investigation is ongoing; however, preliminary findings indicate that there has been no major infrastructure damage to the plant and the long-term reliability of the plant is intact since the explosion has not affected the plant boiler or other heavy equipment.

The story was originally published in Business Recorder on March 3, 2022.