The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) is delaying an $8.6-billion power plant and is in talks with European banks to arrange financing for projects, its managing director said.
The utility was deferring the bidding process for the Hassyan power and desalination plant for at least eight months, Saeed Mohammed Al-Tayer said.
Asked how Dewa planned to refinance a $2.2 billion Islamic loan agreed last April, Al-Tayer said some of the projects were being deferred so the requirement would be different.
“The Hassyan project ... this is a big amount that we are deferring,” he said.
Al-Tayer added that the utility was seeking a “very big” loan to finance expansion.
“The loan will be long-term, maybe 12 years and mainly from Europe,” Al-Tayer said, without elaborating.
“We are approaching the banks in their respective countries ... each company has a government support,” he said.
Dewa has said it aims to invest more than $19 billion to boost electricity-generating capacity by 150 per cent to 5,000 megawatts by 2012. Al-Tayer said the authority may modify the phasing in of the expansion.
“Last year, we met the peak requirement with about 1,200 megawatts of reserves. Because we are meeting the requirement we do not want to have huge reserves,” he said.