Tehran, Iran, July 10
By A. Shirazi - Trend:
Turkish energy company Unit International's deal with the Energy Ministry to construct power plants in Iran with a total output capacity of 6,000 megawatts is in its final stages, an Iranian official said.
“We have been in talks with Unit International over details of the construction of two power plants for one year and now we are going through the final stages,” Mohsen Tarztalab, the chief executive of Iran's Thermal Power Plants Holding Company told Fars news agency on July 10.
Explaining why the construction of the plants have been delayed by the Turkish firm, he said, “Unit International in a foreign investor and it normally needs to get banking facilities from commercial banks like anywhere else in the world in order to be able to start the work”.
The two power plants reportedly entail an estimated $1.2 billion in investment, with unnamed European banks to provide 70 percent of funds and the remainder to come from domestic lenders.
It would not take less than two years to get started, the official said.
In June 2017, Unit International signed a $4.2 billion preliminary deal to build gas power plants in seven regions.
Under the revised deal, the Turkish company will initially construct two combined cycle power plants: a 1,200-MW plant in the city of Saveh, 100 kilometers southwest of Tehran, and an 800-MW plant in Zahedan, Sistan-Baluchestan Province.
Tarztalab said talks over the details of the plants would be probably finalized in the next few months.
Impending US sanctions against Iran have probably delayed the project as many foreign companies are leaving Iran due to threat of the news bans.
US President Donald Trump announced on May 8 that Washington was walking away from the nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was reached in 2015 between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China - plus Germany.
Trump also said he would reinstate US nuclear sanctions on Iran and impose "the highest level" of economic bans on the Islamic Republic.