MPX and EDB to Restart Construction of 720-Megawatt Porto do Pecem Power Plant

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Brazil's Federal Court of Justice has authorized MPX Energia S.A. (SAO:MPXE3) (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Energias do Brasil S.A. (SAO:ENBR3) (Sao Paulo, Brazil), a subsidiary of Energias de Portugal (OTC:EDPFY) (Lisbon, Portugal), to restart construction of the 720-megawatt (MW) Porto do Pecem coal-fired power plant. The project was halted in November by the environmental regulator Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais (Ibama) because of environmental impact problems.

The $1.2 billion power plant began construction in July and is expected to be complete by the end of 2011. The $936 million engineering, procurement and construction contract was awarded to Maire Engineering (Rome, Italy), a division of Maire Tecnimont (BIT:MT) (Rome). For more information, view related July 8, 2008, news article - EDB and MPX Begin Construction of 720-Megawatt Brazilian Power Plant.

The plant will be equipped with two 360-MW Siemens (NYSE:SI) (Munich, Germany) steam turbines and two Doosan Babcock boilers. The facility is located in northeastern Brazil in Sao Goncalo do Amarante, about 55 kilometers from Fortaleza in the state of Ceara.

MPX is developing nine other generating projects that are expected to be built before 2018. All of the projects are located in Brazil, except for the 1,400-MW UTE Castilla coal-fired thermal power plant, which will be located in Chile. The company's main project is the 1,400-MW UTE Porto do Acu coal-fired power plant, which is projected to start operation in 2012. The plant will be located in Rio de Janeiro and will have two 700-MW steam turbines.

Since 1996, Energias do Brasil has been devoted to the generation, commercialization and distribution of electric power in Brazil.

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