Kuwait to issue tender for $1.2bn solar project

Bloomberg

Kuwait will issue a tender to build the estimated $1.2 billion Dibdibah solar-power plant in the first quarter of 2018 as part of the country’s plans to produce 15 percent of power from renewable energy by 2030.
OPEC’s fifth-biggest oil producer set a Sept. 7 deadline for companies to express interest in the 1 gigawatt project, Shukri AbdulAziz Al-Mahrous, deputy chief executive officer of planning and finance at Kuwait National Petroleum Co., said in an interview at the company’s headquarters south of Kuwait City. The cost will be about $1.2 billion, he said. Dibdibah
will produce half of the country’s planned renewable energy output, he said.
Building solar plants is part of government efforts to help the environment while benefiting from increased production of petrochemicals and refined products. Kuwait pumped
2.7 million barrels of crude a day in July.
“By freeing up the resources, the crude and fuel oil, you can process them and have a highly valued product,” Al-Mahrous said. “Everything you don’t use has value for the country.”
The 32-square-kilometer (12.3-square-mile) plant, which should be completed by the end of 2020 in Kuwait’s northwest, will save burning 5.2 million barrels of oil a year and reduce carbon emissions by 1.3 million tons annually,
Al-Mahrous said.