(MENAFN - Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) Enefit together with its partners, YTL Power International Berhad of Malaysia and Near East Investments of Jordan, starts EPC tendering for Jordan's first direct burning oil shale fired power plant. The plant is due to come on line at the end of 2016.
The new power plant will have a capacity of approximately 460MW and will be located at the Attarat um Ghudran oil shale deposit approximately 100km south east of Amman.
Early this month, Enefit reached agreement with the Jordanian Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources and the National Electric Power Company on the terms of the project contracts, which allows the tendering process for the main engineering, procurement and construction of the new power plant to commence.
The tender process will be completed by the end of 2012 and the next stage of project development will be project financing in 2013.
The new power plant will have two oil shale-fired power units (2x230MW) and will consume 8 million tonnes of oil shale per year. Using oil shale as an energy source means a fundamental shift for Jordan on a road to become an energy-independent country and will deliver significant economic benefits to Jordan, including reducing the Kingdom's expenditure on the import of oil products for power generation by more than 500 million USD a year.
The Enefit consortium has conducted an extensive exploration programme and developed a mining plan and technical concept for the power plant since having been awarded a concession over the mining area in July 2010. Enefit is the national energy company of Estonia. Enefit owns and operates some 2,000MW of direct oil shale fired mine-mouth power generation capacity and supplies electricity to some 500,000 customers.
Enefit is currently constructing a further 300MW circulating fluidised bed power generation plant in Estonia which will be the most efficient and environmentally friendly oil shale fired power plant in the world. The new power plant is scheduled to be operational at the end of 2015.
