Italian-US Consortium Builds Egypt's Power Capacity

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). A $500 million electrical generation plant developed by an Italian-US consortium of Edison International (NYSE: EIX), a subsidiary of Montedison (Milan, Italy) and InterGen (Burlington, Massachusetts) a joint Shell-Bechtel company, is due to be commissioned at Sidi Krier as Egypt's first private sector electricity project. The plant, which is being built on a build-own-operate-transfer basis, will produce 650 megawatts (MW) of power through two gas-fired units.

In 1996, the Egyptian government chose Sidi Krier, near Alexandria, as its first electricity privatization location, and since then has awarded contracts for power projects in Suez and Port Said.

Currently, Egypt has a power generation capacity of 17,000MW and will have introduced a further 3,000MW by 2005. The country's electricity generating capacity is estimated at 113 billion kWh with overall domestic consumption standing at 77 billion kWh. Upgrades are being effected for 143 villages in Upper Egypt where $4.3 million has been directed to the renovation of non-functioning electricity networks.