Oman names (most) contenders in 1 GW solar tender

Oman Power and Water Procurement Co. (OPWP) has identified eight of the nine consortia that will compete for 1-1.2 GW of new solar capacity, which is expected to be auctioned by July.

OPWP launched a tender in July to award contracts for two developers to each construct a 500-600 MW generation capacity solar project on a 1,200-hectare site in the province of Manah, in the governorate of Al Dakhiliyah.

A report in the Oman Daily Observer, which was carried by Reuters’ Zawya Middle East news site, quoted Brian Wood, a senior adviser to OPWP, as stating that the request for proposals for the tender will be held in the second quarter of next year. pv magazine has attempted to contact Wood to confirm the statement.

Whilst not confirming any timeline for the procurement exercise, OPWP yesterday released more details of the prequalified bidders on its Twitter feed after being contacted by pv magazine.

Consortia confusion

A series of tweets stated that the tender had attracted interest from 14 potential bidders in four countries. The field of contenders has been narrowed down to nine, eight of which were identified by OPWP. However, there appears to be some confusion around the information supplied, as one of the tweets stated that “the consortiums [sic] are from Oman, France, Japan, Portugal, [the] Republic of Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, [the] United Arab Emirates and [the] United Kingdom.”

Although only eight prequalified bidders are identified, none of them appear to be from Oman or Japan, so it is likely that the tweet in question meant to identify the national origins of all the individual consortium member companies. That being the case, with Portuguese and Omani entities combining in one of the consortia, the missing prequalified bidder would appear to be Japanese.

OPWP also stated that the contracts would be awarded to “private sector” companies, which would appear to rule out at least four of the consortia, which involve state-owned entities.

The private sector contenders identified in the tweets are a bid by Eni and SB Energy; Chinese developer Jinko Power; Portuguese gas company TagEnergy and Omani entity Al Shanfari Group; and French oil and gas giant Total.

The bidders with state-owned involvement are Saudi Arabia's ACWA Power; a joint bid by Korea Western Power Co. compatriot Hanyang Corp., Omani business Nafath Renewable Energy, and an unidentified entity called Solar Reserve Ltd.; a consortium bid by Emirati developer Masdar, French energy company EDF Renewables, and an unidentified body named UAE; and Power Construction Corp. of China.