Electricity Ministry presses forward with Hamrawein power plant
Gov’t pushing through stalled large-scale power projects including the Hamrawein power plant? The government began yesterday studying offers from three consortia for the 6 GW Hamrawein “clean coal” power plant, according to a Cabinet statement. A Shanghai Electric-Dong Fang-Hassan Allam consortium reportedly priced the development at USD 4.4 bn, making it the lowest offer received. GE is offering to build it for USD 5.2 bn, and the Orascom Construction-Elsewedy Electric-Mistubishi Hitachi offered USD 6.19 bn. GE and the Orascom Construction consortium each brought down the cost of their offers from USD 5.8 bn and USD 7 bn, respectively, after the Electricity Ministry had reportedly requested that the bidders re-price. The winning consortium will be announced next week, says Electricity Minister Mohamed Shaker.
Meanwhile, Siemens wants you to know that negotiations with the Electricity Ministry over the establishment of 2 GW-worth of wind farms in the Gulf of Suez have not stopped, according to statements by its Egypt CEO Emad Ghaly picked up by Al Shorouk. He denied any rumors to the contrary. The company has already received 10 land plots in the area for the projects, but talks over the the feed-in tariff (FiT) have been on-and-off since last year, with Siemens refusing to lower its tariff and insisting it should be raised instead. We had reported in January that negotiations were stalled due to disagreements over FiT.