India is likely to set up a Liquefied Natural Gas-fuelled 500 MW power plant at Kerawalapitiya on the Western coast of Sri Lanka as requested by the Lankan government, the New Indian Express reported on Monday.
On environmental grounds, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government is keen on switching over to LNG from coal as fuel for its future power plants.
During his last visit to India, Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena had requested Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to proceed with the 500 MW coal-fired power plant at Sampur in Eastern Lanka but build a plant using LNG instead. Modi said that he would discuss the matter with his officials.
According to sources, an Indo-Lankan Joint Working Group (JWG) has been working on various options in this regard. The Lankan side has proposed that an LNG-fuelled 500 MW plant be set up at Kerawalapitiya, just north of Colombo, where there is already 300 MW LNG-fuelled plant set up during the regime of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
-NIE
-Agencies
