There seems to be little prospect of relief for millions of electricity consumers in the coming years. Hydropower -- a clean and relatively low-cost source of electricity based on an indigenous resource -- should have been at the centre of Pakistan's long-term energy strategy.
POWER PROJECTS
The strategic 969MW Neelum-Jhelum Hydropower Project (NJHPP), comprising four generating units of over 242MW each, was designed to produce 5,150 gigawatt-hours (GWh), or 5.15 billion units, of electricity annually. Completed in 2018 after years of delay and cost escalation, the project has since suffered repeated tunnel failures and prolonged shutdowns. The power plant remained partially closed from July 2022 to August 2023 due to repairs to its damaged tailrace tunnel and has been completely shut down since May 1, 2024, after a collapse inside its headrace tunnel, assumed to be a rockburst.
Wapda now expects power generation to resume by March 2028, nearly four years after the latest shutdown. The prolonged closure of the power plant, now expected to last at least four years and likely to be extended since structural demolition and reconstruction work has yet to begin, will continue to wreak havoc on the national economy. In the past, electricity consumers, including over 34 million domestic households, paid the Neelum-Jhelum surcharge every month through their electricity bills for more than a decade.
It is estimated that the closure of the Neelum-Jhelum project has resulted in a revenue loss of Rs 37.12 billion up to June 30, 2025, according to the audited accounts. Currently, Pakistan has a total installed hydropower capacity of 11,519MW connected to the national grid, representing about 28 per cent of the country's overall electricity generation capacity. Its strategic importance is reflected in the fact that the Neelum-Jhelum project, with a capacity of 969MW, accounts for about 12 per cent of Wapda's hydropower capacity and about 8.5 per cent of the country's total installed hydropower capacity.
One of the primary objectives of constructing the Neelum-Jhelum project, besides power generation, was to establish Pakistan's water rights over the Neelum River, a major tributary of the Jhelum
Pakistan and India have long disagreed over the use of the Neelum River. The dispute was taken to international arbitration, which allowed India to proceed with the diversion, subject to specified conditions. The upstream diversion has reduced the water available to Pakistan's Neelum-Jhelum project, particularly during periods of low river flows. As a result, the power plant has been unable to achieve its designed annual electricity generation of 5.15 billion units.
Average electricity generation during the period 2019-2021 was 4,600 GWh per year, while output fell to only 2,476 GWh in 2022. The highest annual generation recorded was 4,941 GWh in 2020, meaning that the project never achieved its designed generation of 5,150 GWh. Here, it may be worthwhile to recall that originally Wapda, based on a detailed engineering study conducted by Norwegian consultants, had proposed in the 1980s a 500MW project at the site, diverting the Neelum River through a 20-km tunnel.
The project site is located in a highly active seismic and rock-burst-prone zone. It consists of a composite concrete gravity and embankment dam, a sedimentation basin, a tunnel intake, and a tunnelling system extending over 68.6 km, including the headrace and tailrace tunnels for carrying water, together with 11 km of access adits (horizontal passages to the underground), as well as an underground powerhouse and transformer complex.
Thus, nearly 80 per cent of the project involved underground excavation, while the tailrace tunnel passes about 380 metres beneath the Jhelum River. Since construction commenced in January 2008 and the project achieved commercial operations in December 2018, it has suffered repeated tunnel failures, engineering problems, time overruns, budget revisions, design modifications and prolonged shutdowns.
The consultancy contract for providing detailed project design and construction supervision was concluded with a consortium of international and Pakistani engineering firms in May 2008. The construction contract was awarded on the basis of the original detailed engineering design of 1997.
In July 2022, damage occurred over approximately 3.5 km of the tailrace tunnel. After repairs, the powerhouse resumed partial operations. During the subsequent year of partial operations, the 33km headrace tunnel suffered a major failure in May 2024, resulting in its collapse and blockage from the dam site. The incident prompted a complete shutdown of the power plant, which continues to this day. The findings of the various government committees constituted to investigate the two tunnel failures have yet to be made public. According to the company's audited accounts for 2024-25, the estimated cost of repairing the damaged infrastructure is around Rs32 billion, with the restoration process expected to take approximately two years, which has now extended to four years.
Sometime in July-November 2022, an international panel of experts was appointed to conduct a technical evaluation of the first incident. Later, in May 2024, the government also engaged an international engineering firm to conduct independent physical and technical investigations into the successive catastrophic structural failures at the Neelum-Jhelum project and to undertake a comprehensive assessment of the subsurface geology and design flaws. The study was intended to determine whether the latest massive tunnel failure was an unavoidable geological mishap or the result of flawed construction engineering.
Some media reports have claimed that the Canadian firm's final report has been submitted, but its conclusions and findings, as well as the timeline for permanent structural repairs, have not been made public.
To be continued
The writer is a retired chairman of the State Engineering Corporation.
