Residents Demand Answers On Xayaburi Dam

[OzMick]

The Laos people are building a hydro-electric dam which, while not reducing the total flow in the Mekong, will provide them with almost free electric power, and hard currency from selling some of that power to Thailand. ...........

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Do you really believe this?

What part of it is difficult to believe? Investors build the dam with little or no cost to the Laos, in return they pay a concession fee for every Mw/hr generated. It is normal to take part of that payment as minimum cost or free power.

The part that is the most difficult to believe is the "Lao People" part (i.e. while perhaps not as bad as Cambodia, the mafia type politico's that rule in Lao are not the "Lao People", of which 90 percent have no knowledge of this dam ... similar to all the other boondoggle 'investments' that the Govt is responsible for, most of which only generate new houses and new cars for the ruling elite.

Among the real Lao people who know about this dam are those who have been forceably moved from the building site as well as all the other villages upstream that will be moved in the future, although many of those villages still have no information about this dam.

Another part that is difficult to believe is the "no cost to the Lao" ..... i.e. you're only talking about the joint-venture construction costs, Laos (or "Lao People") will pay heavily for this.

The other part difficult to believe is the "minimum cost or free power" .... take a look at the cost/benefit analysis of dams already in operation (not the pie in the sky projections made by the construction companies and consultants prior to operation) in Laos ... and also take a look at electricity prices, before and after the dams.

THis is probably another build/operate/transfer deal whereby although the Govt of Laos doesn't have to put money up front ... and the foreign owners get the revenue generated for x(20?) number of years in return for their investment in the dam ... cheaper or free electricity (for Lao) as a result of this dam will never happen. Please let me know when you see the price of electricity decrease in Laos, particularly as a result of this or any other large hydro-electric project like this..

The generators to be fitted to the dam are 7 x 175 MW and 1 x 60 MW which will feed the Laos grid. That will increase their annual capacity (using the 2/3 factor used in the MW:GW/hr figures quoted) be about 1/6th which I suggest should push prices down. If you have relevant data showing otherwise, I would be glad to see it.

If you have read and understood my earlier posts, you will see that there has to be a huge change in the way we generate power, as fossil fuels are depleted and less energy ratio efficient as they become harder to extract. HEP Dams are going to become much more common, and those countries that CAN build them will have huge energy advantages over those who can't.

Those who don't like the environmental and economic effects would be better working to minimise them than simply opposing because it is going to happen anyway.