The government has sought a loan of more than $350 million from the World Bank to boost its power sector and build pipelines to transmit natural gas to help ease its power crisis, a senior official said yesterday.

"We are almost in the final stage (of getting the loan approved) and the money will be utilised to implement a number of projects in the energy sector, including setting up a 300-megawatt (MW) power plant," a senior official of the Ministry of Energy said.

yesterday urged the government to move to develop the Phulbari coal mine without any further delay.

They saw the huge coal reserve at the Phulbari coal mine as the only option now to deal with future energy crisis, particularly in power generation.

"We can easily produce 3,500MW of electricity from the coal to be extracted from the Phulbari mine,' said Rangpur Chamber President Mostafa Azad Chowdhury, adding that as the country's gas reserve is depleting fast, coal is becoming the only option for power generation.

Leaders of National Oil, Gas, Minerals and Power and Port Protection Committee yesterday reiterated their demand for implementation of the six-point agreement signed on August 30 in 2006.

The previous governments had initiated deals with Asia Energy, Tata Group and Mittal to extract coal near Barapukuria, they said while observing the second anniversary of Phulbari killing.

It appears that the draft coal policy began with a text heavily biased towards private investment and facilitating large margins of profit for the mining companies. Ideally, there should not be a problem with the private investor making large margins but not at the cost of national interests or doing away with all kinds of binding safeguards to protect the environment and livelihoods of thousands of people who would be displaced

The much-talked-about 8th draft coal policy was not approved at the Advisory Council meeting due to strong differences over the issues of payment of royalty, acquisition of land, and quite a large number of ambiguities in it.

Sources at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources told The New Nation yesterday that the draft coal policy was sent back to the ministry concerned for further scrutiny.

Besides, the meeting of the Council of Advisers held on Wednesday in Chittagong suggested to make the draft coal policy smaller in size removing all the ambiguities.

This piece is in response to a news item which appeared in The Daily Star on August 10 under the headline "1m solar household systems by 2012 to achieve target'.

Frequent power outages coupled with sweltering heat over the past four days have made life miserable in the Sylhet city and its adjoining areas.
Official and commercial activities as well as processing of tea-plants in the region are also being hampered due to the frequent power outages.
Sources in the Power Development Board, Sylhet said they had been supplying 40 megawatts of power against the daily demand of about 130 megawatts over the past four days.

Petrol price hiked again: Pakistan

The eighth draft coal policy that emphasises immediate government-led action in coal sector to meet the country's surging energy demand is likely to be placed before the caretaker government's cabinet today.

The draft proposes to set up a "mine Bangla" in line with Petrobangla by 2010 to spearhead different mining schemes. This government body will take strategic partners from private sector through open tenders for quick development of the schemes.