Kuwait Awards Power and Desalination Project to GDF Suez Consortium

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Energy major GDF Suez (OTC:GDSZF) (Paris, France) is leading a consortium that has been awarded the contract for the construction of a 1,500-megawatt (MW), gas-fired, combined-cycle power plant at Az Zour in Kuwait.

Kuwait's Partnerships Technical Bureau awarded the contract for the Az Zour North Independent Water & Power project.

The project will be owned jointly by the consortium, which includes Sumitomo Corporation (TYO:8053) (Tokyo, Japan) and its Kuwaiti partner Abdullah Al Sagar & Brothers and Kuwaiti nationals through an initial public offering.

The GDF Suez-led consortium will construct the 1,500-MW power plant, along with an associated water desalination plant with a capacity of 102 million to 107 million imperial gallons per day. The plant is scheduled to start commercial operations in 2015.

The plant's capacity will account for approximately 12% of Kuwait's installed generation capacity and about 23% of its installed desalination capacity. All of the plant's output will be purchased by Kuwait's Ministry of Electricity and Water under a 40-year, long-term energy conversion and water purchase agreement.

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