Construction of Israel’s largest privately-owned power plant has gotten under way this week, piloted by Scottish-based construction firm Wood Group GTS at an Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Co. site in Ashkelon, plant owner Dorad Energy announced today.
The 812-megawatt plant is expected to be completed by 2013, and will run on a co-generation combination of 12 gas turbines produced by General Electric and two steam turbines, Wood Group GTS has confirmed.
Meanwhile, the natural gas to power the plant will be supplied by Egypt’s East Mediterranean Gas company.
Dorad Energy is a jointly owned by Eilat-Ashkelon Infrastructure
Services (37.5%), Turkish company Zorlu (25%), Adelcom (18.75%) and U.
Dori Engineering Works (18.75%), while Wood Group GTS is a subsidiary of
the John Wood Group, an international energy services giant based in
Aberdeen, Scotland.
While the entire project will cost Dorad billions of dollars, the
company will be paying the Wood Group about $870 million to install the
turbines and oversee all the earthworks, electricity and construction,
according to a statement from Dorad.
“[Wood Group GTS] views this project as a cornerstone for widescale
operations in Israel, and sees a great challenge in taking on such a
huge project, which constitutes a breakthrough in the establishment of
power stations in Israel,” said Shlomo Cohen, manager of the Wood Group
GTS Israel branch, in the statement.
“This is the first project in Israel of the global parent company Wood
Group, and Wood Group GTS intends to continue to expand operations here
in its areas of expertise.”
“We want to build more projects with other companies,” he later told The
Jerusalem Post, noting that the group is already in talks for a few
specific projects.
The establishment of such a large-scale power plant, which will make up
8% of Israel’s total installed capacity at completion, is part of a
larger effort to generate competition with the Israel Electric
Corporation, according to a Dorad spokesperson.
Dorad received its 25-year license for a natural gas plant in January
2003, as part of a government- led initiative to “create private
enterprise competition so they can reform the IEC,” the spokesperson
explained.
Meanwhile, according to the Electricity Sector Law, the IEC must
transmit power generated by the private plant to Dorad customers using
its national distribution lines, at a price that the two groups agreed
upon a few months ago.
“We have the full cooperation of the IEC,” the spokesperson told the Post.
The IEC has in the past declared that it encourages competition with entrepreneurs and that it continues to cooperate with them.
Dorad is not the only private power supplier to have received a license
from the government; the next big project is being developed by Israel
Corporation’s OPC subsidiary and will produce approximately 430
megawatts, and a smaller project is owned by Dalia Power Energies,
according to the Dorad spokesperson.
Confident that this venture will be profitable, Dorad is receiving loans
of over a billion dollars from a consortium of four Israeli banks and
has already acquired several “high voltage customers,” – including the
Defense Ministry and the Mekorot National Water Company, the
spokesperson said.
These customers have quite an incentive to take advantage of Dorad’s
alternate power source, the spokesperson added, noting that “whatever
[price] the IEC gives them, we can give them 10% less because we produce
our electricity more efficiently.”