Qatar state utility General Electricity & Water Corporation (Kahramaa) has invited firms to bid for a tender to provide assessor consultancy services for the Facility E independent water and power producer (IWPP) project in Ras Abu Fontas.

Kahramaa awarded the contract to develop and operate the project to a team led by Japan's Sumitomo Corporation on 25 November.

The Facility E IWPP scheme will have a power generation capacity of 2,415MW and a water desalination capacity of 110 million imperial gallons a day (MIGD).

According to Kahramaa, it is in the process of finalising the power and water purchase agreement (PWPA) with the Sumitomo consortium and the strategic national investors, Qatar Electricity & Water Company (QEWC) and QatarEnergy (QE).

"As part of the PWPA requirements, it is required to appoint a consultant to act as the assessor for the project, who will be a neutral party executing the duties as per the PWPA requirements including monitoring the quality and progress of the project and issuance of the acceptance certificates for the facility," the state utility said.

It expects to receive bids for the assessor consultancy services contract by 2 January 2025.

MEED reported in July that Sumitomo had submitted a proposal for the contract. It leads a consortium that comprises fellow Japanese utility developer Shikoku Electric, Seoul-headquartered Korea Overseas Infrastructure & Urban Development Corporation and Korea Southern Power Company.

The developer consortium’s engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) partner is South Korea’s Samsung C&T.   

Mitsubishi Power will supply the plant's power generation combined-cycle gas turbines, as MEED reported.

Spain's Acciona will build the seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant, which will cost $500m. 

The original plan was for the Facility E IWPP to have a power generation capacity of about 2,300MW and a desalination component of 100MIGD once fully operational.

Kahramaa revised the power plant’s design capacity to 2,600MW and sought alternative prices from bidders. 

Kahramaa eventually cancelled and reissued the tender in September 2023. 

MEED understands that the new target commercial operation date for the Facility E IWPP project has been moved to 2029.

The project costs approximately $3.7bn, with the EPC contract valued at $2.8bn.

The state utility’s transaction advisory team includes UK-headquartered PwC and Clyde & Co as financial and legal advisers, respectively, led by Belgrade-headquartered Energoprojekt as technical adviser.

According to Sumitomo, the equity distribution between the project company shareholders is:

• Sumitomo Corporation: 17%
• Shikoku Electric: 11%
• Kospo: 6%,
• KIND: 6%
• QEWC: 55%
• QE: 5%

Facility E is Qatar’s fifth IWPP scheme. Completed and operational IWPPs include three projects in Ras Laffan – known as Facilities A, B and C – and Facility D in Umm Al-Houl.

Awarded in 2015 and completed in 2018, Facility D was developed by a Japanese consortium of Mitsubishi Corporation and Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco). South Korea’s Samsung C&T was the EPC contractor.