Saudi Electricity
Co (SEC) may involve private firms in building more
power plants to feed big consumers such as state oil giant Saudi
Aramco, SEC’s chief executive said on Tuesday.
State-controlled SEC plans to invest $80bn to boost
capacity to at least 70,000 megawatts by 2020 from an installed
capacity of 50,000 MW now to meet domestic demand rising at 8
percent annually.
The private sector would contribute through independent
power producers (IPPs), investing $24bn of the total $80bn, Abdullah al-Hussayen, Saudi minister of water and
power, said in October.
SEC plans to build six IPPs to add 10,000 MW by 2017 with
investments of $12bn, SEC’s CEO Ali Saleh Al Barrak told
Reuters on the sidelines of a company event.
“This is what we have today in our plan and we are revising
it every 2 years and probably we may add some more power
plants,” Barrak said.
“We have in mind, in discussion now a number of power plants
which will be for new consumers, probably one of them will be in
Rabigh – a new one which is not on the list — but this is for
specific customers, there are big consumers they need high
capacity 500 MW-600 MW,” he said.
Barrak said SEC was looking to serve big consumers which
would need extra capacity by bringing in private investors to
build power plants.
“We invest in it with the private sector and we sell power
to industrial consumers, some of them like PetroRabigh
and Saudi Aramco and others,” he said.
Aramco generates 1,063 MW of power and 4.4 million pounds of
steam per hour from four facilities. It has expected its power
demand to grow to 3,600 MW by 2010.
The state oil firm plans to expand the capacity at the four
facilities and add new facilities at two more sites by setting
up a power firm.
SEC has now projects under construction to add 7,000 MW of
capacity in the next two years, Barrak told reporters on the
sidelines of the same event.
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