As flood wipes power off

What would Pakistans energy managers not give away to achieve what they accidentally have in the past week or so? Possibly everything.
If you were to peek into Pakistans electricity generation mix today, you may end up thinking the country has finally got hold of that ever-elusive magical wand. Yes, the energy generation mix has finally tilted, though slightly, in the favour of hydel electricity; 51 percent to be exact.
Sadly, however, this is a case of my loss is your gain, where hydels share in the mix has jumped at the expense of thermal electricity generation - with electricity shortage remaining as high as 4,000-4,500 MW.
Worse still, the electricity generated form hydel sources is rather slightly lower than what it has been in the past five years on average. The devastating flood, which in any other country would have resulted in increased hydel power, has actually resulted in a massive shortfall - leading to hours long load shedding across the country.
The flood has caused a couple of power plants to close down temporarily, which will soon resume operations as no serious damage is believed to have been done.
But what is worrying is that a few gas fields which have been affected by the flood waters would take longer time to come back into full swing. By then, many industrial units will continue face load shedding - both of gas and electricity. Think about the economic losses in areas where the flood hasn even touched.
Its not that natural disasters can be averted but one needs to have contingencies in place if and when such a crisis occurs. Forget Kalabagh, forget Bhasha - even if Pakistan had a network of small and medium dams, a lot could have been saved - lots of land, agriculture produce and other properties, and of course lives.
An ADB study conducted in 2006 shows that Pakistan can quadruple its electricity generation if it were to build 300 small dams in 5-7 years. What in fact the country faces is electricity shortfall as the water, instead of being stored into dams, entered gas fields and power plants.
A word of caution - electricity in the months to come might be more expensive than what many think. Gas shortage would mean thermal generation based on furnace oil, which will have to be imported.
The same old cycle of additional burden on the import bill, pressure on rupee, higher power tariffs due to fuel adjustment will be repeated. And since the government will be virtually squeezed fiscally, don even dream of subsidies.