The Bakun Dam(n)!

The latest reversal in the Bakun Dam project - downsizing due to insufficient energy demand - should be a signal to the new prime minister to do some serious stock taking. Enough tax payers' money has been wasted - Sarawak Hidro has already spent some RM1.5 billion on the project. The human cost has been immeasurable - 10,000 indigenous people have been removed from their ancestral lands in 1998 even while the project had been shelved.

The stop/starting since the damned project was first proposed in the seventies, the proposal and abandonment of the aluminium smelter, the upsizing and downsizing of the dam are all symptomatic of a wanton disregard for planning. To remind ourselves of the ludicrous inconsistencies of official policy on this damned project:

In 1980, the Bakun dam was proposed with a power generating capacity of 2400 MW even though the projected energy needs for the whole of Sarawak was only 200MW for 1990. The project was thus coupled with the proposal to build the world's longest (650 km) undersea cable to transmit electricity to the peninsula. An aluminium smelter at Bintulu was also proposed to take up the surplus energy.

In 1986, the project was abandoned because of the economic recession although the then prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad announced just before the UN Conference on Environment and Development at Rio that this was "proof of Malaysia's commitment to the environment" (NST, 13.6.90)

In 1993, with the upturn in the Malaysian economy, the government once again announced the revival of the Bakun HEP project.

To cushion the expected protests, the energy and telecommunications minister (now works minister) S Samy Vellu gave Parliament a poetic description of a "series of cascading dams" and not one large dam as had been originally proposed.

Before long, it was announced that the Bakun dam would be a massive 205-metre high concrete face rockfill dam, one of the highest dams of its kind in the world and it would flood an area the size of Singapore island. The undersea cable was again part of the project. There was also a plan for an aluminium plant, a pulp and paper plant, the world's biggest steel plant and a high-tension and high-voltage wire industry.

Then in 1997, with the onset of the Asian financial crisis the Bakun project was put on hold for the second time. But the scandal was, while the anthropologists in all the Malaysian universities were asleep, the Government proceeded to remove 10,000 indigenous peoples made up of 15 different ethnic groups from their ancestral lands. And all this while the project was on hold!

In 1999, after the economy had recovered, the government again announced that the project would be resumed albeit on a smaller scale of 500MW capacity.

Before long in 2001, the 2400MW scale was once again proposed although the submarine cable had been shelved. Today we still read reports about companies still contemplating this hare-brained scheme.

The question all Malaysians must ask is: Who is paying for all this stop-starting? Ultimately it will be the Malaysian consumers who pay for this expensive figment of a megalomaniac's imagination.

We have just been told that the aluminium smelter project of business tycoon Syed Mokhtar al-Bukhary which was going to take up 1000 MW of Bakun electricity has fallen through. But if it had not, was there ever any proper assessment of the market viability of the project?

Those familiar with the world market for aluminium will tell you that aluminium is being produced in Central China at half the world prices. With the new trade agreements, we won't be able to impose any trade restrictions on cheap aluminium or aluminium products from China. Thus even the Arabs are not going to invest unless they can be sure of the Asean market. For sure, the grandiose plans of the Bakun dam optimists will fail because of the Asean Free Trade Agreement (Afta).

Economists will tell you we should not be competing against China in basic resource production such as energy and aluminium. Rather, we should aim for higher end technology and to do this, we must first improve the quality of our power production as well as the quality of our infrastructure, questions I had raised since the early nineties in Parliament.

Our power output from the home supply fluctuates between 190-198 volts when we should be getting 220-240 volts as stipulated. We read about frequent outages up and down the country.

If the new prime minister really wants to know the state of the Malaysian energy industry, he should ask for independent audits on every power station in the country. These should preferably be done by reputable international audit authorities from outside Malaysia. We are told that Tenaga Nasional Bhd is now selling off property, power stations are not working at full capacity and that the electricity industry is indebted.

Right now, the country is being fed conflicting reports about energy demand. Experienced Bakun dam watchers will tell you such conflicting and mutually contradictory assertions have been used by the dam proponents to justify every flip flop of this misconceived project.

Apart from the economic cost and the wastage, how are investors supposed to plan for the long-term and medium term? What is the long-term plan for Bakun? Can Bakun compete with the rest of the world or for that matter, Indonesia?

The cost of our energy is 11 sen per kwh. The Chinese buy energy for their aluminium plants at US1 cent; Alcoa buys energy for its Canadian plant at US1.25-2 cents. In Kalimantan, they use cheap waxy crude and new technology to produce energy at US1.25 cents. If Bakun intends to sell at 22 sen, how can we compete?

Thus, apart from the aluminium holy grail, there is an assumption among Bakun dam proponents that energy from the dam will be lapped up by the rest of Borneo. What makes them think the Indonesians need to buy Bakun electricity? Has a market study ever been done from the time this dam was proposed in the seventies?

Concerned NGOs have always called for the abandonment of this monstrous project because it is economically ill-conceived, socially disruptive and environmentally disastrous. The environmental destruction is evident many miles downstream since the whole Bakun area has been logged by those who have already been paid by Sarawak Hidro.

The social atrophy among the 10,000 displaced indigenous peoples at Sungei Asap resettlement scheme awaits the study by our anthropologists since the authorities have chosen to ignore the fact-finding study by the concerned NGOs. The economic viability of the Bakun dam project has been in doubt from the beginning and its history of stop-starting is simply a measure of a scandalous flaw in planning.