Power Plant at McArthur River Mine Heads Toward Construction

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Energy Developments Limited (EDE) (Queensland, Australia) is heading toward the construction of the 53-megawatt (MW) McArthur River Mine power plant expansion project, which will be located in Northern Territory, Australia.

Energy Developments has secured a 20-year contract to extend the power supply agreements to Xstrata's expanding mine. The new agreement will be valid from the date when the power plant is operational, which is expected to be in 2014.

The expansion project will add six internal combustion engines (with a total combined output of 53 MW) to the existing six combustion turbines at the plant, producing 22.5 MW of electricity. The internal combustion engines will be supplied by Wartsila (New South Wales, Australia), a global leader in power solutions for the marine and energy markets. Xstrata (Brisbane, Australia) will supply the natural gas required to run the engines, from the Daly Waters to McArthur River natural gas pipeline.

During August 2012, Energy Developments Limited has signed a build, own, operate and maintain agreement for this expansion project. As per the agreement, Energy Developments will provide 68 MW of power supply to the mine by building a new 53-MW power station. The additional 15 MW will be supplied by the partial utilisation of the EDE's existing mine power station. Through this, energy developments will be able to provide the 40-MW requirements of the expanded mine, and additional power will be used during peak load conditions.

The proposal for this project was made by Macarthur River Mining Pty Limited (Winnellie, Northern Territory) a company wholly owned by global mining group Xstrata plc (Zug, Switzerland) during 2011. Subcontracting work was awarded to Electrical Construction and Maintenance Pty Limited (Western Australia, Australia), a leading provider of installation and maintenance services for power generation. Milestone Engineers and Project Managers (Perth, Australia) has been awarded the engineering, procurement and construction contracts for the entire McArthur Phase III expansion, including the power plant expansion.

EDE is currently finalizing all subcontractors and equipment suppliers. Subject to the finalizations, project constriction will commence by January 2013.

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