As the old adage goes, Sri Lankans have been reduced to living a hand to mouth existence. For months the country has been in the grip of man– made crises. Sharply declining foreign exchange reserves have finally taken its toll on the availability of essential food items like milk powder, fertiliser and cooking gas. The consumer has been left with uncertainty about what tomorrow holds. To add to this growing list, is the looming power crisis and the power cuts which are being predicted. Already, areas in Colombo, its suburbs as well as the outstations are experiencing blackouts of more than one hour. Some people are having to live through it twice in the day in both their office and home. The consumer however remains in the dark, not knowing whether these are scheduled power cuts or a breakdown in the power supply. According to media reports, the Sapugaskanda and Kelanatissa power plants are being drip fed with fuel as and when supplies become available and the country limps along a day at a time. Repeated calls to the government from economic experts for a sustainable short, medium and long term roadmap to pull the country out of its economic quagmire, have seen no results so far and the country is hurtling fast into an irretrievable abyss.
Energy minister Udaya Gammanpila has warned of the need for a pre–emptive tightening of belts to avoid 24- hour blackouts by March. He has said that unless Sri Lanka manages to secure a large dollar loan, an uninterrupted power supply cannot be guaranteed.
Twin issues have led to the current power crisis. In the short term it is the lack of dollars to buy fuel that breathes life into the country’s power plants for them to function. Seventy percent of Sri Lanka’s energy needs are met through thermal power generation using coal and oil while the balance thirty percent is from hydro power. Thermal power plants such as Sapugaskanda and Kelanitissa use furnace oil, diesel and naphtha to generate about 460 MW collectively to the national grid. The current stock of furnace oil is almost finishedand the expectation is that the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) will provide more. There is also no more naptha, a by– product when crude oil is refined,because the Sapugaskanda oil refinery has ceased its operations temporarily due to the inability to purchase crude oil due to the dollar shortage. About 10, 000 MT of diesel which the CPC supplied to the Kelanitissa power plant which is a combined cycle power station earlier in the week, will last for about five days and the need for more fuel will arise after that. Meanwhile Norochocholai, which functions on coal power, generates about 900 MW to the national grid. Because one of it’s units is not functioning at present, it’s generating capacity has been reduced to 600 MW but will be fully operational by the end of the month.
Sri Lanka is hit by a drought every five years and because this weather pattern is known the Ceylon Electricity Board and other stakeholders prepare for this eventuality. The current year was expected to be a dry one and the CEB saved water for the driest period which is usually between March and April. However because of the difficulties with purchasing fuel due to the dollar crisis the existing water resources had to be used at the start of the year instead. The country is in the unenviable position where if by May there is no rain and there is also no money to buy fuel, a blackout will be inevitable with a sporadic supply of power. Instead of the consumer being informed when to expect a power cut, it will be a scenario where the consumer will be told when there will be a power supply. Although by last October both the Chairman and the General Manager of the CEB who has since retiredwere forewarned about the impending crisis the warnings had gone unheeded much to the chagrin of the CEBs employees. They point out that the CEB management, the Chairman is a political appointee, simply did not bother to listen to the experts as they were more preoccupied with the New Fortress Energy deal.
The second issue which has led to the currentelectricity crisis and which has been in the making for a long time has been the non– commissioning of the Sampur power plant and not adding a fourth generator to the Norochcholai plant after government decisions to stop using coal. Together they would have added around 800 MW to the national grid. According to Dhammika Wimalaratne who is the joint secretary of the CEB Engineers Union, experts have been telling successive governments since 2015 that the country will hit a power crisis in 2021. The pandemic deferred its onset in 2021 because the demand for power was not high that year. It was also a year of significant rainfall and the forecasted crisis did not take place.
Influencing the decisions around Sampur and Norochcholai is the government’s drive to generate 70 percent of the country’s electricity requirementsthrough renewable energy sources like solar and wind power by 2030. Energy experts like Wimalaratne see this as a gradual process if it is to be implemented with the existing network. ‘To provide electricity at low cost it has to be generated at low cost using sources such as LNG and coal. The country can still have coal power with zero emissions by putting in place technical measures such as carbon capturing technology’.
For instance, to meet the targets which have been setfor 2030 about 1000 MW will have to be generated using solar power which will require a massive infrastructure investment. It is something which thecountry cannot afford right now when it does not have money to buy fuel to even ensure an uninterrupted power supply. With the country’s capacity to meet its renewable energy obligations limited for now, the potential for an external source to sell it to the CEB where it will have to be paid for in dollars, is real.
Sri Lanka, which all this time has been running with the hare and hunting with the hound, has been ingratiating herself to India after ending her long honeymoon with China over a shipment of contaminated fertiliser. Earlier this week India, which has promised Sri Lanka a bail – out package for what they described as a landmark development to import food, essential items and medicines, said she is stepping up critical support to the country for fuel. Indian External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar, in a letter addressed to his Sri Lankan counterpart G. L Peiris said that India will provide a new line of creditof US$ 500 mn for Sri Lanka to import fuel from India. According to a highly placed source, the modalities for this are being currently discussed and dismissed links between it and the Sri Lankan government’s recent release of some 37, 500 MT of fuel which had been stuck on a ship because of a lack of dollars to release it.
Former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told parliament this week how the country is going through an unprecedented economic and political crisis after 34 years. Referring to President Gotabaya Rajapakse’s policy speech at the inauguration of the new session of parliament on 18th January, Wickremesinghe said the president mentioned only the forex crisis even though the country’s economic crisis is very serious. Wickremesinghe, who is widely discredited for being partly responsible for not pursuing corruption claims against the Rajapakse government which preceded his Yahapalana government, flagged the example of the government’s recent move to get parliament to approve an additional 229 billion rupees, which is a nine percent increase to the budget which was passed in November last year. ‘ Why was it not included in the budget in November and from where is the country going to find this money’, he asked the government. The former PM whose leadership has seen the country’s oldest political party the United National Party being trounced out of parliament said there are three reasons for the economy being the way it is today. ‘It’s the Samurdi beneficiaries, three wheel drivers and small and medium enterprise owners who bear most of the burden of the economy. We created a middle class with the open economy and it will collapse along with the economy. The handful of individuals and companies that profit will continue to benefit while the country is suffering like this’.
About the country’s debt status he said that in 2019, it was 13, 000 bn and two years later between January and September 2021 it had risen to 17, 000 bn. ‘The country’s debt is 10 percent of the GDP while the debt which has to be paid with foreign earnings for the next six years is six bn dollars. He said that by February the finance minister must tell whether the government is going to the IMF or whether it has an alternative because this situation cannot be allowed to float’.
While Wickremesignhe’s words will resonate with the reality of the country, whether he will take a step beyond their confines in the interests of the country and its people, lies in history.
