Saudi Arabia's Marafiq, a power and water utility company has brought online its first independent water and power plant (IWPP) with a capacity of 2,700 megawatts, a company executive said on Monday. Start-up of the plant, which also produces 800,000 cubic meters of desalinated water per day was a few months ahead of schedule due to high demand from the capital Riyadh, Sultan Al-Ruhaili, general manager of technical affairs at Marafiq said. “Jubail's project is operational... before schedule but not in full production. We have just started operations in August this year,” Ruhaili told Reuters on the sidelines of Saudi Water& Power Forum 2009 here. “We started earlier because of demand in Riyadh. The demand in Riyadh is very high,” he added. “Now (the project) is 20 percent operational and in the first quarter of 2010 it will be in full production, maybe even before that,” Ruhaili said. Marafiq, which was set up in 2000 to provide integrated utility services in the Kingdom's main industrial cities, Jubail and Yanbu plans to launch bids for a new power plant in Yanbu that has a capacity of 750 MWs early next year, Ruhaili said. “In the first quarter of 2010 we will tender another plant in Yanbu so we have Yanbu 1 and Yanbu 2, the capacity can be expanded if needed,” he said. Marafiq is increasing the capacity of its power generation plants to meet rising power demand from industry in Yanbu and Jubail. In July, it awarded South Korea's Hanwha Engineering Construction Corp a $750 million deal to expand the current power output from the existing plant in Yanbu to 1,500 MW from 1,000 MW. Marafiq's main shareholders are the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu, Sabic and the Public Investment Fund. Ruhaili said his company will sign on Monday a new contract worth SR400 million with Sete Energy for a 48,000 cubic meters per day Industrial Wastewater Treatment Plant.
