Engro: Thar’s Coal in the Desert
安格鲁公司：塔尔沙漠有煤
Pakistan’s biggest private-sector firm is betting on a fabled coal mine
巴基斯坦最大的私营企业正押注于一个传说中的煤矿
Pakistan’s enormous mineral wealth has long lain untapped. Since a 1992 geological survey spotted one of the world’s largest coal reserves in Thar, a scrubby desert in the southern province of Sindh, prospectors have hardly dug up a lump. Among those to flounder is a national hero. Samar Mubarakmand, feted for his role in Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons programme, has just shut the coal-gasification company he founded in 2010, when he vowed on live television to crack Thar.
巴基斯坦储量巨大的矿产资源一直未得到开发。1992年的一次地质调查在巴基斯坦南部信德省（Sindh）灌木丛生的塔尔沙漠（Thar）中发现了世界上最大的煤炭矿藏之一，但勘探者至今都没有挖出一块煤来。一大批人一筹莫展，其中还包括一位民族英雄。萨马尔·穆巴拉克门德（Samar Mubarakmand）因为对巴基斯坦核武器项目的贡献而备受赞誉，但他刚刚关闭了自己在2010年成立的煤炭气化公司，那一年他在电视直播中誓言要拿下塔尔。
Environmentalists, many from abroad, argue the reserve’s 175bn-ton bounty should remain underground. They point out the coal is lignite – dirty, poor-quality stuff that, in adding to carbon emissions, increases the risk of climate change for Pakistan. Other critics note that by locking itself into coal, Pakistan may miss out on the plummeting price of solar energy.
环保人士——很多来自国外——认为这1750亿吨的资源应该被留在地下。他们指出，这些煤藏是污染严重、质量低劣的褐煤，会增加碳排放，加大巴基斯坦气候变化的风险。其他批评人士指出，巴基斯坦如果紧盯着煤炭不放，可能会错过太阳能价格暴跌的良机。
To such qualms, the government offers three rejoinders. First, severe power shortages have long blighted the nation, and renewable sources cannot offer the daylong, year-round power it needs. Second, coal accounts for less than 1% of current generation, compared with 70% in neighbouring India and China. And third, domestic coal would allow the country to forgo expensive imports of the fuel for newly built power stations, a drain on fast-dwindling foreign-exchange reserves.
面对这些疑虑，政府从三方面做出反驳。首先，严重的电力短缺一直困扰着这个国家，而可再生能源无法全天、全年不间断地提供需要的电力。其次，煤电占当前发电总量的不到1%，而在邻国印度和中国，这一比例为70%。第三，国内煤炭可以让该国无需再为新建的发电站购买昂贵的进口燃料——进口燃料会耗尽本已在快速缩减的外汇储备。
Enter Engro, Pakistan’s largest private-sector conglomerate. The firm’s reputation as a canny risk-taker dates to 1991, when employees bought out its parent company, Exxon, an American energy giant, in the first transaction of its kind in Pakistan. Today, as is common, a single family – the Dawood clan – has a controlling stake. But it has not lost what analysts describe as its “saviour complex”, a desire to address national shortcomings through managerial talent and a balance-sheet plumped by sales of $633m-worth of stakes in its fertiliser-and-food businesses in 2016. Lately that has meant a redoubled focus on energy and in particular on the puzzle of Thar.
巴基斯坦最大的私营企业集团安格鲁（Engro）登场了。早在1991年，该公司就获得了精明冒险家的名声。当时其员工从母公司美国能源巨头埃克森（Exxon）手中买下了控股权，这样的交易在巴基斯坦还是头一回。现在，与常见的情形一样，单个家族——达伍德（Dawood）——拥有控股权。但它并没有丢掉分析师们所称的“救世主情结”——它仍希望解决国家的弊病。而这主要倚赖两个方面：管理人才；通过2016年出售价值6.33亿美元的化肥和食品业务股份而充实起来的资产负债表。因此，这家公司最近加倍关注能源领域，尤其是塔尔难题。
Eight years ago Engro bought the rights to one of Thar’s 13 blocks, containing 1% of the reserve (more than enough given the gargantuan size of the mine). To work on extraction, it formed the country’s biggest ever public-private partnership, the Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC), in which Engro digs and the state provides infrastructure. Relying on the state can break strong firms. Engro itself almost went bankrupt in 2012 after the government refused to honour a sovereign guarantee to provide gas to one of its fertiliser plants. Yet without similar government support, no other Thar block-owners have secured financing, leaving Engro’s diggers, which began work last year, to move ahead.
塔尔共分为13个区块，八年前安格鲁买下了其中一块的开采权，占总储量的1%（鉴于该矿藏的巨大规模，这一储量已相当可观）。为了进行开采，它建立了该国史上最大的公私合营企业——信德安格鲁煤矿公司（SECMC），由安格鲁负责开采，政府提供基础设施。对国家的依赖可以摧毁强大的公司。2012年，由于政府拒绝为它的一家化肥厂供气提供主权担保，安格鲁几乎破产。但是，没有类似的政府支持，其他塔尔区块的所有者都没有获得足够的融资，唯有安格鲁能向前迈进，于去年开工。
The endeavour benefits from being in the group of infrastructure projects that make up the $62bn China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a hoped-for trade route. Western banks shook their heads when approached about a coal project, so Engro has relied on Chinese financing. Analysts note an irony in China’s promotion of coal abroad as it withdraws from the fuel at home. Handling the extraction at Thar is the China Machinery Engineering Corporation, a state-owned firm with expertise beyond Pakistan’s reach.
该工程因被纳入中巴经济走廊的基建项目而受益，这条规划中的贸易路线价值620亿美元。西方银行对找上门来的煤炭项目只会摇头，因此安格鲁依赖中国的融资。分析人士指出，中国在国内减煤，却在海外推动采煤，颇为讽刺。在塔尔负责开采的是国有企业中国机械设备工程股份有限公司，拥有巴基斯坦达不到的专业能力。
Around 126 metres below the sands of Thar, with just 20 more to go, Engro’s diggers can now almost touch their prize. When the coal is reached, as is expected in mid-2018, it will feed a pit-mouth power station constructed by Engro, and, in time, three others owned by partners in the SECMC. These stations will furnish around a fifth of the country’s electricity for the next 50 years. The financial rewards could be vast. “All my richest friends are jumping up and down [because they did not get there first]”, says the boss of one big multinational construction business.
安格鲁的挖掘机现在已经下探到塔尔沙漠下深约126米处， 再走约20米就能触碰到他们的战利品了——这预计将在2018年中实现，并开始为安格鲁建造的一个坑口发电站提供燃料，之后还可为SECMC的合作伙伴拥有的另外三个发电站供煤。今后50年这些电站将为全国提供大约五分之一的电力。经济回报可能非常之大。一家大型跨国建筑公司的老板说：“我那些最有钱的朋友都懊恼得直跳脚（因为他们没能抢先到那儿）。”
Hurdles remain, not least complaints from nearby villagers about the disposal of the vast quantities of wastewater from the mine on their ancestral grazing lands in the form of a reservoir. In reply, Engro stresses its social work in the surrounding district of Tharparkar, the poorest in Sindh, which includes the construction of several free schools. More self-interestedly, it is training locals to drive so they can man the dump trucks that trundle day and night around the mine. According to Shamsuddin Shaikh, chief executive of Engro Powergen, the conglomerate’s energy division, Engro also has its sights on Reko Diq, a gargantuan and long-stalled copper mine in Balochistan, the least developed of Pakistan’s provinces. To tap one of the country’s two largest and most niggardly mines is hard enough. Imagine cracking them both.
困难仍然存在，尤其是附近村民们的抱怨——对于在自己祖祖辈辈放牧的土地上建水库来处理大量煤矿废水，他们颇多怨言。安格鲁在回应时强调自己在信德省最穷的塔帕卡县（Tharparkar）周边开展社会福利工作，包括建立了几所免费学校。它还教当地人开车，这更多是从自身利益出发——这样他们就能驾驶着自卸卡车在煤矿周围日夜忙碌。集团的能源部门Engro Powergen的首席执行官沙姆斯丁·谢赫（Shamsuddin Shaikh）称，安格鲁还将目光投向了巴基斯坦最落后的省份俾路支省（Balochistan）一个庞大且长期停滞的铜矿Reko Diq。要开发该国两个最大又最“吝啬”的矿藏中的一个就已经非常困难，想象一下要同时对付两个会如何。
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