Bakrie Power in talks with new partners for Tanjung Jati A project
Friday, October 22 2010 - 02:46 AM WIB
Bakrie Power's president director Ali Herman Ibrahim said that the company should find new partners to replace Tomen Power Corporation of Japan and International Power of Britain which had withdrawn from the consortium that would build the Tanjung Jati A coal-fired power plant.
Herman said that several foreign companies had expressed interest to take part in the power plant project. ?We could not unveil their names because the negotiation is still underway,? he said.
When state owned electricity firm PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) signed the agreement to buy power from Tanjung Jati A in April 1997, the official record issued by PLN stated that the project was owned by Bakrie Power Corporation (20 percent), Tomen Power Corporation (30 percent), UK-based firm International Power (30 percent) and PT Maharani Paramitra (20 percent). Maharani is owned by former President Soeharto?s daughter Titiek Prabowo.
The Tanjung Jati A had been delayed several years because PLN had not yet agreed with the prices of the electricity proposed by Bakrie.
Bakrie proposed a price range of between 6 US cents and 7 US cents per kWh for the electricity to be produced from the Tanjung Jati A plant, but the proposal was rejected by PLN. ?The negotiation is still underway to settle the difference,? he said in April last year.
A difficulty in obtaining the land in Jepara for the power plant had also hampered the power project, Ali said on April 29 last year, adding that the company could relocate the plant site to Pemalang, also in Central Java , if the land appropriation problem could not be settled.
PT Bakrie Power had also raised the cost estimate for the construction of the Tanjung Jati A power plant to about $2 billion from $1.2 billion due to an increase in the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) costs. (godang)