PHOTO: Almaty Heating and Power Plant №1 switching to gas

Almaty authorities will provide gas supply to Almaty private housing area within two years, Tengrinews.kz reports. This will happen when Almaty Central Heating and Power Plant #1 will be switched over to natural gas. Akylbay Saparov, chairman of KazTransGas-Almaty, assures that Almaty city won’t incur any deficit of natural gas originating from Turkmenistan. Besides, he promises that the cost of heating and power for the citizens will not change because of the transfer, even though natural gas is two time more expensive than coal that the plant is using now. "Supplies of natural gas from Uzbekistan are being limited year after year, but now we have an excellent opportunity to get supplies of Turkmen gas. This link enables us to fully supply our population and heating plants with gas," he says. The reason why Almaty authorities are so concerned with reducing coal burning is that it is responsible for a substantial part of the city's pollution. Emissions are generated by growing numbers of private and public transport, plants and factories and the city's private housing areas that are largely not covered by gas supply and are using coal for heating. Air quality has become especially worrisome in the last decade and its improvement is high on the government's agenda. The government has developed an action plan called The Package Program for Reduction of Polluting Emissions in Almaty for 2009-2018. The plan involves a broad range of actions including covering private housing areas with gas supply, switching public transport over to gas, stimulating private factories to cut emissions and transferring public plants over to gas. It is planned for achieve full coverage of Almaty city with gas supply within 3 years. Akylbay Saparov says that this project is worth more than 10 billion tenge ($67.5 million). About 4 billion tenge ($27 million) from this amount has already been used. 996 million tenge ($6.7 million) have been allocated from the local budget to provide gas supply to the private housing areas in Almaty in 2012. The money is spent on design and estimates and on construction of a 110km gas circuit in Kalkaman-1, Kalkaman-2, Kalkaman-3, Turkestan and Ulzhan-1 microregions of Almaty. All other privet housing areas of Almaty are expected to be covered with gas supplies in 2013. The Akimat of Almaty (city authorities) has signed a memorandum to transfer Almaty Central Heating and Power Plant #1 to natural gas as part of the coal-to-gas project. The transfer should be effected this year. To make it possible the city had to reconstruction it Natural Gas Distribution System #2. Its equipment has been completely modernized which gave it an additional capacity of 50 thousand cubic meters per hour. This modernization was not feasible before, because of lack of natural gas supplies. The System is already operating in the new mode. To make the switch of the Heating and Power Plant №1 to gas possible, a 2.4 medium pressure gas circuit was build to connect the Plant and the System. Now the plant can use natural gas instead of coal. “Usually we used to burn mainly coal during heating seasons - from November to March - and only 20% of fuel oil and natural gas. But his season, the gas company promises that natural gas we make 100% of the fuel we will be burning. Switch over from coal to natural gas will greatly contribute to improvement of the ecological situation in Almaty,” says Issakhan Syrgabayev, executive director of Almaty Central Heating and Power Plant #1. KazTransGas-Almaty is a subsidiary of KazTransGas and is 100% owned by it parent company. It is the regional operator of gas supply in Almaty city and Almaty Oblast.