BTU
Power completes acquisition of majority interest in Tunisia’s
Carthage Power Company
Posted: 30 May 2004
BTU Power Company announced today the completion of its acquisition
from PSEG Global, a subsidiary of Public Service Enterprise Group,
of a 60 per cent equity interest in Carthage Power Company (CPC),
the Tunisian special purpose company which owns and operates a 471
MW gas-fired power generation facility in Radès, Tunisia.
CPC is also owned 40 per cent by Marubeni Power Holdings BV, a
subsidiary of the Marubeni Corporation, a leading Japanese diversified
industrial and trading conglomerate with numerous international
power projects in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas.
CPC, Tunisia’s first independent power project, began operations
in 2002 and provides more than 20 per cent of the national electricity
generation capacity. Power from the plant is sold to the state-owned
Société Tunisienne de l’Electricité et
du Gaz (STEG).
In addition to its 60 per cent equity interest, BTU Power Company
will also operate the plant, through BTU STEAG O&M Services
Company, in conjunction with CPC’s own staff of highly qualified
Tunisian professionals who have pioneered a distributed maintenance
system, the first of its kind in the industry. BTU STEAG O&M
Services Company is a joint venture between a BTU Power Company
affiliate and STEAG encotec GmbH of Germany established to manage
and operate power projects acquired or developed by BTU Power Company
in the Middle East and North Africa.
Wael Al-Mazeedi, Chief Executive Officer of the BTU Group, underscored
the acquisition’s importance: “CPC will become a building
block of our energy investment program for Tunisia. We believe that
Tunisia
is uniquely positioned to become an energy service center for North
Africa: it has a technical skill base that rivals some countries
in Europe, a transparent business environment, and it possesses
an investment grade sovereign rating.”
BTU Power and its affiliates (collectively the “BTU Group”)
were established in 2001 to capitalize on the deregulation and privatization
of the energy and energy-related industries in select Middle Eastern
and North African countries.
In addition to acquiring operating assets in the power, oil, gas,
petrochemical, and related industries, the BTU Group develops greenfield
and brownfield project opportunities.
The BTU Group’s shareholders include leading publicly traded
companies and institutional investors in the Gulf Cooperation Council
countries. The BTU Group operates out of offices in Burlington,
MA, USA and in Dubai, UAE.
Financial terms of the sale were not released.
For more information see www.btuventures.com
Posted by Richard Price,
Editor Pipeline Magazine
Information supplied by companies
or PR agencies who are responsible for content. Send press releases
to info@pipelinedubai.com |
