Business Standard Friday, August 9, 2002
ASIA FILE A river of opportunity It is classic regional cooperation, although environmentalists will have different views, says Barun Roy It is classic regional cooperation, although environmentalists will have different views. Thailand is helping China build a 1,500 MW hydroelectric power station on the Mekong in Yunnan province and will buy back its entire output. The $1 billion plant, fourth in a series of eight that Beijing has planned to build to turn Yunnan into an energy base, will be located at Jinghong, about 105 km from the Laotian border. GMS Power, one of Thailand’s leading private power developers, is the project’s principal shareholder, with a 70 per cent financial stake. Chinese Power Corporation, Yunnan Electricity Generating Authority, and the government of Yunnan province are the other partners. Work is scheduled to start in 2006. A transmission line through Laos will deliver the power to Chiangmai, 400 kilometres away, where the Thai grid will take over. China sees the Mekong as a gigantic water machine to generate enough electricity to transform its southern regions and also leave some for its neighbours. Its part of the river, known locally as the Lancang, is a turbulent course with steep drops all along its 1,240 km stretch, making it an ideal turner of turbines. The eight plants will have a combined capacity of 15,550 MW, equal to almost 80 per cent of the proposed capacity of the massive Three Gorges project on the Yangtze. On its own, Thailand cannot produce all the electricity it needs and Yunnan, with its grandiose plans, is a convenient source. This convergence of demand and supply has made Thailand sign up for 3,000 MW of Yunnan power. The remaining 1,500 MW of the Chinese supply is to come from the 4,500 MW fifth Lancang power station to be built at Nuozhadu, upriver from Jinghong, and the power will be available by 2014. Thailand has signed similar energy contracts with Laos, and three Laotian power plants — the Theun Hinboun, Houay Ho, and Nam Leuk — are more or less dedicated to supplying its needs. By 2008, Thailand will be buying a total of 3,263 MW from at least six Laotian plants, including the $600 million Nam Ngum-3. When completed by December 2006, Nam Ngum-3, also sponsored by GMS Power, will feature a 220-metre-high concrete-face rock-fill dam across the Nam Ngum River (a Mekong tributary), a 440 MW underground power station, and a 133 km, 230 kV transmission line to the border of Thailand. The 4,200 km Mekong, thus, has truly emerged as a river of opportunity. While energy is an obvious field of cooperation, there are other areas of opportunity. River transport, and tourism based on it, is one of them. Since the 1960s, China has been dredging the Lancang to enable it to accommodate ships between 100 DWT and 300 DWT (deadweight tonnage). In June 2001, an 886 km section from Simao Port in Yunnan to Luang Prabang in Laos was opened to commercial navigation. With further improvements, almost the entire stretch of the Mekong from the delta to Yunnan will be passable by large ships carrying cargo and tourists. Before 1990, the Mekong wasn’t a viable export route for China. Today, at least 250,000 tons of Chinese exports pass through the river every year. And over 100 passenger ships sail it on regular cruises, offering tourists an unforgettable adventure through some of Asia’s most exotic landscapes and cultures. As economic cooperation builds up along the Mekong, environmentalists are worried that the mighty river and its ecosystem could be at grave risk from human activity. They are particularly disturbed by China’s dam projects, which, they argue, will interrupt the river’s natural flow, destroy its many islands, swallow vast agricultural areas, swamp villages, and ruin fishing grounds in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. China doesn’t think so and believes its dams will, on the contrary, increase the Mekong’s dry-season runoff in its lower reaches by at least threefold, from 689 cubic metres per second at present to 1,869 cubic metres per second. The first Lancang dam, supporting a 1,250 MW power station, was commissioned at Manwan, about 500 km from Kunming, in 1996. The second, 111 metres high, with a total storage capacity of 940 million cubic metres, is located at Dachaoshan, 131 km further downstream, where the first generating unit started rolling last year, three units will be in operation this year, and two more will be completed in 2003. Last January, China started building its third project on the Lancang, at Xiaowan, whose 292-metre-high (100 storey) dam wall will make it the world’s tallest. It will be a $4 billion behemoth, with a reservoir that will hold 15 billion cubic metres of water, the combined volume of all reservoirs in Yunnan. It is this project that has angered the world’s environmentalists, but it’s crucial in China’s energy calculations. The 4,200 MW plant, whose first unit will be ready in 2010, is to transmit half its output to Guangdong and other industrially advancing coastal provinces. Business Standard Ltd. 5, Pratap Bhavan, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi - 110002. INDIA Ph: +91-11-3720202, 3739840. Fax: 011 - 3720201 Copyright & Disclaimer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
