Co-operation on the exchange of electricity will be very important in making the 10-country ASEAN bloc move forward to a single market by 2015, experts said, but a shortage of power supply in each country remains a challenge.
Speaking to reporters yesterday after the opening of the 29th meeting of the... continue
A massive power outage that left large areas of Phnom Penh without electricity and water and plunged southern Vietnam into darkness on Wednesday was caused by a crane operator knocking a tree onto a high voltage power line, Vietnam’s state-owned energy provider said yesterday. …
“A crane with the registration number 61P-3745 broke safety regulations, which led to widespread outages in the Southern region of Vietnam,” the Southern Power Corporation, which is owned by Vietnam Electricity Group, said in a statement. …
The state-owned newspaper, Than Nien, reported that the incident had cost the Southern Power Corporation and estimated $7000, 000 in lost revenue. …
An official at Cambodia’s state-owned energy provider Eletricite du Cambodge…said that no one yet had estimated how much the incident had cost the firm. …
However he did say the outage had meant Cambodia’s national grid had lost 40 percent of its capacity during the hours without electricity. …
The blackout hit the tourist thronged river front area and left scores of hotels restaurants and offices throughout the city in darkness. …
Leaders of ASEAN power utilities and authorities gathered on Thursday to follow up the progress of the ambitious ASEAN power grid action plan, which was set to inter-connect power lines in the 10 ASEAN member states by 2020.
Speaking to reporters after the opening of the 29th meeting of the Heads of ASEAN Power Utilities and Authorities Council, Keo Rottanak, director general of the Electricity of Cambodia, said the meeting enabled the bloc’s member states to be informed of the latest development and development objectives of the energy sector in each ASEAN country. …
Meanwhile, Rottanak said that by 2020, about 80 percent of the Cambodian population would be able to access to electricity.
Ith Praing, secretary of state at Cambodian Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy, said that the regional power grid inter-connection would be the main driver for green energy and reduced damages to the environment. …
Several days of rain have finally brought relief to hundreds of families in Koh Kong province’s Khemara Phoumint City who had been without water for two weeks because the reservoir that provides their supply dried up during hot season. …
LYP Group, a company owned by Ly Yong Yong Phat, channels water to 4,000 families in Khemara Phoumint City from the Cham Yeam reservoir in Mondol Seima district and [provincial director of the Department of Industry Mines and Energy] Mr. [Pitch] Si Yun said that about 20 percent of those families had been affected since early May by water shortages.
Mr. Si Yun said that both his department and LYP group had studied ways to solve the area’s water-shortage problem and had already identified a new reservoir site at Ta Phorn waterfall located nearby that could store between 5,000 and 7,000 cubic meters of water. …
Mr. Si Yun said construction was scheduled to begin later this year and would take around two years to complete. …
A massive power outage Wednesday in Southern Vietnam brought rolling blackouts that lasted for hours to Ho Chi Minh City, the entire southeastern region of Vietnam and large sections of Phnom Penh.
Vietnam’s state-owned Southern Power Corporation said Wednesday that the problem occurred around 2 p.m. following the breakdown of a 500-kilovolt transmission line that also supplies Cambodia with much-needed electricity. …
“We have only about 30 percent of our normal supply of electricity to distribute to important areas of the city, but we are trying to fix the problem,” the [Eletricite du Cambodge] official said yesterday afternoon, adding that Vietnam provides Cambodia with about 40 percent of its national electricity supply.
Keo Sovannarith, deputy director of the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority, confirmed the city’s water supply had been hit by the outage.
“When the water supply factory looses electricity from the EdC, the machine-which uses electricity to work-can’t pump water to the pipes,” he said. …
Officials and business people say solar panels are gaining in popularity in rural areas, where the power grid does not reach.
Mao Sangat, director of Solar Energy Cambodia, told the Post yesterday that his company saw increases of installation of solar power systems for families whose children worked abroad and remitted money to their parents.
He said that so far, there were no huge projects to equip solar panel systems in public places such as schools or hospitals in rural areas supported by NGOs, but solar panels were selling well to families in three provinces – Kampong Cham, Prey Veng and Svay Rieng. …
Yiang Tal, chief of administration of Rural Electrification of Cambodia, said Electricity of Cambodia (EDC) provided $4 million for the Department of Rural Electrification Fund (REF) this year for providing loans to villagers and private electricity providers for implementing rural electricity development. …
He said that more than $1 million had gone to providing loans to private electricity providers to connect lines to rural homes, and all the connected families were required to pay back over two or three years without interest charges. …
Two-way trade between Vietnam and Cambodia in the first four months of the year reached nearly US$1.3 billion, a 10 per cent rise over the same period last year.
According to the Vietnam Trade Office in Cambodia, Vietnam’s exports to Cambodia fetched over $1 billion while its imports were $253 million in the four-month period. …
Vietnam’s investment in Cambodia has increased significantly in the last three years, but a mechanism to encourage and oversee investments in prioritized sectors is needed, according to diplomatic sources.
Tan Nguyen Tien, head of the economic section at the Vietnamese embassy in Phnom Penh, said Vietnam’s investments in Cambodia quadrupled from $566 million in 41 projects in 2010 to $2.5 billion last year. …
Tien said Vietnam Airlines’ direct services between the two countries and Viettel’s telecom service in Cambodia have helped boost Vietnamese investment in that country. …
There are also four projects in the energy sector with a total investment of nearly $800 million, five in finance-banking with $250 million, one telecom project capitalized at $150 million, and a civil aviation project worth $100 million.
Vietnamese FDI in Cambodia is expected to top $4 billion by 2015, and trade between the countries to increase from $3 billion last year to $5 billion by 2015. …
Thailand-based Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding Pcl (RATCH) has “seriously assessed” investment possibility in neighbouring countries including Cambodia, a company statement said last Thursday.
It said it had geared up for business expansion in domestic and international markets in the potential existing investment bases Laos and Australia, but is also considering Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines. …
About 300 people on Saturday blocked off a stretch of National Road 5 in Banteay Meanchey province protesting what they call is an unfair increase in electricity prices. …
Protesters believe that the private electricity supplier, Sok Vitith, altered the Commune’s electricity converter without telling the consumers so that it now produces 160 kilovolt-amps (KVA) instead of the usual 100 KVA.
“I reject the claim I did it for my own benefit. I had to do it because there was not enough electricity to supply the commune, so in April, I changed the electricity cabinet from 100 KVA to 160 KVA,” he [Sok Vitith] said.
Blaming the villager’s soaring usage on the increased use of appliances during recent hot weather, Mr. Vitith said that he had accepted villagers complaints and had yesterday reinstalled the 100 KVA converter. …
With the potential for vast state revenues from oil extraction and mining in coming years, Cambodia is currently failing to manage its nascent extractive industries according to a think tank.
New York-based Revenue Watch Institute yesterday launched its 2013 Resource Governance Index, which included Cambodia for the first time. It looked at 58 countries, assessing governments’ reporting practices, control of corruption and rule of law in the oil, gas and mineral sectors. …
“While Cambodia received a fairly high score for its institutional and legal settings, the nation’s very low scores in its reporting practices and enabling environment accounted for its low ranking in resource governance,” a statement from Cambodians for Revenue Resource Transparency, a local Partner of Revenue Watch says. …
The Kingdom imported 412,190 tonnes of petroleum in the first quarter of 2013, compared with 471,000 tonnes in the same period the previous year, a decline of 12 per cent, according to the Ministry of Commerce.
A private sector representative said the drop does not mean a slowdown in production but came as a result of more stock being kept over from 2012 because of price fluctuations.
The data showed that between January and March of this year the country spent $397 million on petroleum, down 15 per cent from $469 million during the same period last year. …
Energy Minister Pongsak Ruktapongpisal has given the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) the green light to proceed with a plan to build coal-powered plants in Myanmar and Cambodia – providing Thailand with 10,000 megawatts of electricity. Egat has also been instructed to negotiate the purchase of nuclear power from China in order to bring down the cost of electricity. …
In addition, the Energy Ministry has also been discussing the possibility of investing in a coal-powered plant in Cambodia to produce 4,000MW of electricity. Thailand hopes that buying power from Cambodia will keep the domestic cost of electricity from exceeding Bt6 per unit. Egat also plans to go ahead with its coal-powered project in Krabi once it has reached an “understanding” with residents and businesses protesting against the deal. …
In addition to investing in coal-operated power plants from neighbouring countries, Egat is also looking at investing in hydro-electric power projects within the region. …
The government on Friday awarded CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat a $92.21 million contract to install power lines in Cambodia’s eastern provinces, the Council of Ministers said in a statement.
During the weekly Cabinet meeting, senior officials including Prime Minister Hun Sen signed off on the deal to extend the national grid by connecting Phnom Penh with Kompong Cham, Kratie, Stung Treng, Ratanakkiri and Mondolkiri provinces. …
Srekor village has stood on the banks of the Se San River in northeastern Cambodia for generations. In a few years it will be gone, submerged along with more than 300 square kilometres of surrounding farmland and forest. …
For 37-year-old rice farmer Pa Tou, the future looks bleak. The relocation site set aside for them is wholly unsuitable, he complains. There is no irrigation, it is miles from the river and the ground is either rocky or covered with trees. And at this stage it has no schools, no health clinics, no pagodas and no roads. …
International Rivers, a campaigning NGO, predicts the Lower Se San 2 Dam “will have a costly, catastrophic impact on the Mekong River’s fisheries and biodiversity”. …
But media reports consistently show the government favors projects like hydropower dams and coal-fired power stations. More are likely to go ahead. On May 9, the Cambodia Daily newspaper said two more planned dams on the 3S network had been deemed economically feasible, moving them a step closer to approval. One would be a 370MW dam on the Se San River; the other a 100MW dam on the Sre Pok River. The first would flood 40 villages alone.
Meanwhile the Cambodian government has plans to build a hydropower dam on its stretch of the Se Kong River, which rises in Laos. Baran says that would block the region’s third fish highway, leaving the Mekong mainstream as the sole route for migratory species, further harming fish stocks. The rush to hydropower risks inflicting profound and irreversible damage to many more people than the residents of Srekor village.
Recurring power cuts and power shortages draw sharp complaints from Cambodia’s public, the political opposition and business owners. Keo Ratanak, director-general of Electricite du Cambodge (EDC), talked to the Post’s Sarah Thust.
What is EDC doing to reduce electricity cuts here?
The issue of power shortage is not a surprise to the Royal Government of Cambodia and EDC. We had forecasted many years ago that Cambodia would be precisely in the situation that it is in today.
That is the reason why EDC and the government had been working very, very hard to attract investment for [power] generation projects in hydropower, in coal-fire plants, in biomass power plants, and importing power from Thailand, Vietnam and Laos. …
What is the reason for the electricity shortages, then?
Investment needs time and construction of projects needs time. Each construction usually takes four to five years, [not including] the time to negotiate, to close the financing.
Part of the problem also is that under the agreement we reached with Vietnam they are supposed to give us 200 megawatts at least, up to now, but they only gave us 170 megawatts, because Vietnam itself faces shortages.
The problem with the power from Thailand is a little bit different from Vietnam. It’s about technical constraints. The line that comes to our border is of small capacity, so to transmit more than 100 megawatts to Cambodia is difficult. …
Delta Electronics (Thailand), one of the world’s leading producers of power supplies and electronic components, plans to expand to Cambodia and Myanmar, the Bangkok Post reported on Wednesday.
“There is no indication of a specific timeframe for the expansion, but the company sees these countries . . . as distributing channels of supply chain to other Asian and European countries,” the report said.
Asian Development Bank deputy country director Peter Brimble said, while he cannot speak for Delta about their reasons for moving to Cambodia, generally “regional automotive and electronics firms are looking to expand and spread their operational risk, including firms based in Thailand.” …
Two massive hydropower dams planned for the Mekong’s tributaries in Ratanakkiri province have been deemed economically viable by two feasibility studies conducted by a pair of giant Chinese conglomerates, a provincial industry, mines and energy official said yesterday. …
Despite the feasibility studies having been completed, local authorities yesterday said they have not received any clear information regarding the dams. Veun Sai district governor Chum Ngil said he had not been consulted about the dam’s feasibility despite a huge area being carved out of his district for a reservoir. …
Meach Mean, coordinator for the 3S Rivers Protection Network, an NGO advocating for villagers affected by the region’s planned dams, said the social and environmental impacts for the Srepok 3 and Sesan 3 dams would be huge. For example, about 40 villages will be affected by the Sean 3, he said. …
While significant obstacles remain, the success of the rice sector is a potentially crucial driver in Cambodia’s prosperous and equitable development. …
Cambodia announced two major bilateral trade agreements recently, with the Philippines and Thailand, that are expected to further expand the country’s rice export sector. …
Agriculture, led by rice farming, contributes to roughly a third of the country’s GDP and has immense potential for strengthening Cambodia’s economic growth, accelerating poverty reduction, and improving the living standard of its citizens. As part of this agenda, in 2010, the RGC adopted a new Policy Paper on Paddy Production and Rice Export, better known as the Rice Policy, to promote diversification of Cambodia’s economic sectors by catalyzing growth in paddy rice production and milled rice export to match the growth seen in the garment and service sectors. …
If Cambodia’s rice export sector were to reach its full potential, it could produce 3 million tons of milled rice, with the total export value amounting to $2.1 billion (approximately 20% of the GDP) and an estimated additional $600 million (approximately 5% of the GDP) to the national economy. It would also boost employment and income for agricultural farmers who make up more than 70 percent of the population living in rural areas. …
Poor transport and infrastructure such as roads, railways, warehouses, and handling equipment also increase costs for farmers. …
The lack of handling equipment in one of the main ports, the Sihanoukville Port, is also a major constraint for the export of large quantities of milled rice. …
As a relatively new player in the milled rice market, Cambodia faces a steep learning curve. However, with a surplus of 3.5 million tons of paddy rice (equivalent to 2 million tons of milled rice), Cambodia has the potential to soon be among the top five milled rice exporters in the world.
As work begins on Cambodia’s biggest dam, those advocating against its construction have warned that the region’s rush for hydropower will have a disastrous effect on millions of people who rely on the Mekong River to survive.
Last month, workers began preparing an area in northeastern Cambodia for a huge hydropower project, the 400-megawatt Lower Se San 2 Dam. …
Scientists estimated the Lower Se San 2 Dam could reduce the total fish yield of the Mekong Basin by 9.3 percent.
“So it’s 9.3 percent of 2.1 million tons – which is a gigantic amount,” said Baran. “In other words, this expected loss represents around 200,000 tons per year, which is much more than the whole marine sector of Australia. And, nine times more than the annual inland fish catch in Germany or the U.S.” …
Meanwhile, work on the Lower Se San 2 Dam has started and thousands of people who live in the areas that will be submerged by the dam’s vast 300-square-kilometer reservoir have been told they will have to move. …
One of them is 37-year-old Pa Tou. He said none of the 400 ethnic minority families in Srekor village on the banks of the Se San River wants to leave. …
Pa Tou, who has three daughters, said that will not be possible at the relocation site, which is miles from the river. He said the land there is poor for farming – most of it is rocky or covered with trees – and there are no health clinics and no schools. He fears they will all be left much worse off.
