DUSHANBE, January 5, 2009, Asia-Plus — Shifting the Dushanbe heat and power plant from natural gas to coal may lead to increase of cost price of electricity and thermal power, not to mention ecological problems, Ayub Aliyev, Candidate of Science in Geology and Mineralogy, said in an interview with Asia-Plus today.
“There ought to take into consideration that the nearest coal field, Ziddi, is located 70 kilometers of Dushanbe, not to mention other large coal deposits such as Shurob and Fon-Yaghnob in the Sughd province and Nazar-Aylaog in the Rasht district,” Aliyev said.
According to him, expensive heavy trucks are needed to carry coals from the mentioned coal deposits with total coal reserves estimated at 2.25 billion tons. “This will lead to increase of the coal cost prices that in turn will lead to increase of cost prices of electricity and thermal power produced by the Dushanbe heat station,” Aliyev noted.
“To add to this, the ecological problems will also affect the cost price of power generated by the Dushanbe heat station,” Aliyev said, “Expenses on purification to reduce coal emissions may prove to be excessive that will also lead to increase of the power cost prices.”
We will recall that the Dushanbe heat station plans to construct new coal-run boiler houses this year.
In meantime, the agreement concluded between Tajik state natural-gas distributor, Tojikgaz, and Uztransgaz, the state gas producer in Uzbekistan, on December 31 2008 sets the price of gas imports at $240 per 1,000 cubic meters in 2009, a 65.5 percent increase over the price for 2008 that was set at $145 per 1,000 cubic meters.
