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GCC grid nears solid legal footing

The Gulf Cooperation Council Interconnection Authority (GCCIA) is hoping to finalise the legal agreements for the pan-GCC power grid by the end of the year, according to a spokesman.

Among other aspects, the agreements will set out the terms for power exchange and trading between the six GCC states. Some countries are thought to have already requested additional power from the Authority upon commencement of the grid's operations.
"The legal agreements are the basis for the entire project - without them we have no interconnection" said GCCIA's Hassan Al-Asaad. "They will deal with the legal aspects between the shareholders of the GCC interconnection grid, which are the six states, in terms of ownership, termination, penalties and so on."

A further, more technical agreement concerns the transmission and metering codes to be used on the transmission lines. A team headed by legal firm Norton Rose, along with National Economic Research Associates (NERA) and Mott MacDonald, has been appointed to develop the agreements.

Al-Asaad said three workshops have been conducted, the latest of which was recently held in Bahrain, where representatives from each state met face-to-face to hold discussions and go over drafts, with the aim of establishing the final agreements. Once approved at GCCIA board level, the agreements will be sent out to the appropriate representatives from the six states for approval and the signing of the documents.

"The consultant is now in the process of developing the third versions of these agreements," said Al-Asaad. "We hope to have the final ones out by third quarter of this year. We will then have a fully-fledged agreement in place once the project is up and running, which is expected to be in the first quarter of 2009."

Meanwhile, GCCIA's director of operations and maintenance Ahmed Ibrahim said the construction work for the interconnection is still on target for commissioning on 24 December 2008. "The construction work is progressing well - it is around 30 % completed. Most of the major equipment for the HVDC converter station (at Al Fadhili, Saudi Arabia) will be in the country by the end of the year," said Ibrahim.

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