Turkish energy company Turcas is completing a feasibility study to construct power plants with a 1,600-megawatt (MW) capacity with foreign partners, its chairman said yesterday.
Spain’s Iberdrola will be offered a role as partner among other prospective companies, Erdal Aksoy told Reuters in an interview, adding that the final choice will be announced within “a few months.”
“We have projects that will use natural gas and imported coal. We are currently at the planning stage... but everything will be completed according to the market, meetings with possible foreign partners and feasibility studies,” he said.
Half the capacity will use natural gas as fuel and the other half imported coal, he said.
Turcas last year launched a retailing joint venture with the Turkish division of oil giant Royal Dutch Shell Plc, with Turcas holding 30 percent of the partnership.
Turnover for the joint venture reached $6.3 billion in 2006, said Aksoy.
Turcas also set up an oil exploration, refining and marketing partnership with Azeri state oil company Socar, which holds a 51 percent stake. That partnership has a subsidiary gas company, in which Turcas will own a majority stake.
The Socar Turcas partnership applied to Turkey’s energy market watchdog (EPDK) to build a 200,000-barrels-per-day refinery at the Ceyhan terminus of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast.
“We have applied but a feasibility study was necessary for the licence, so we put out a tender for feasibility and design and chose Stone and Webster,” he said. Stone and Webster is owned by Shaw Group.
Turcas plans to expand its operations into the petrochemical sector as well by participating in the privatization of a 51 percent stake in state-controlled Petkim.
“But if we cannot get Petkim, petrochemical operations will be added on to our refinery as greenfield... and we will enter the petrochemical market that way,” said Aksoy.
Aksoy also said Turcas is thinking of expanding its operations beyond the Caspian to Libya with operations in oil, natural gas and electricity.
Turcas had said before it was interested in oil and natural gas exploration in Iran and Iraq, but Aksoy said the security situation in Iraq was holding them back for now.
(Reuters, 26/03/2007)