Iraq Targets 22,000 Megawatts of Additional Power as Project Pipeline Fills

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Iraq's power generation project pipeline is filling up. In November, a $349 million contract was signed with the power construction company Metka (ATX:METKK.AT) (Athens, Greece) for a 1,250-megawatt (MW) plant in southern Basra province, which will comprise of 10 gas-fed units of 125 MW each. The units were purchased from GE Power, a division of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) (Fairfield, Connecticut), in 2008.

Hyundai Engineering (Jinae, South Korea) has signed $396 million in contracts to build two new power plants that will have a total capacity of 1,752 MW. At Rumaila, five 292-MW units will be installed with an investment of $308 million. At Taza, in Kirkuk province, one 292-MW unit will be set up with an investment of $88.5 million. The gas-fed units were acquired from Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) (Munich, Germany) in 2008 for $88.5 million.

China National Machinery & Equipment Import & Export Corporation (CMEC) (Beijing) is signing a $1.08 billion contract to construct a 1,260-MW power plant in Salahaddin province, which is north of Baghdad, and the Power Ministry has signed a $1.04 billion contract with STX Heavy Industries, a subsidiary of STX Corporation (Jinae, South Korea), for the construction of diesel-fed power stations in three provinces, with a combined power capacity of 900 MW. A local company will be awarded the contract to build a 500-MW power plant in Thi Qar province.

LS Industrial Systems (Gyeonggi, South Korea) has signed an $85 million contract to install 35 power distribution systems and Siemens has a $76 million contract to build three power transformer stations. The latter is the latest in a series of contracts issued by the power ministry to upgrade the grid.

Alstom S.A. (EPA:ALO) (Paris, France) is to build a 182.4-MW, gas-fired plant at Mansureiya, 50 kilometers northeast of Baghdad. Alstom is already contracted to refurbish a gas-fed plant in the central province of Najaf.

A power generation vessel has arrived at Khor al-Zubair port in Basra and will feed 110 MW to the national grid. Two other power vessels already are operating at Umm Qasr in Basra, supplying 200 MW.

The current installed total power capacity of about 9,000 MW does not meet demand, and the Power Ministry is planning to add 22,000 MW of power to the grid over the next three years.

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