Malaysian private power plant to supply Thailand
Malaysian private power plant to supply Thailand
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuter): Malaysia will soon license a consortium to build a 650 megawatt (MW) power plant to supply electricity to Thailand, Energy, Posts and Telecommunications Minister S. Samy Vellu said yesterday.
The minister said Landmarks Holdings, Time Engineering and Yayasan Islam Perlis will form the Perlis Power consortium to build the 1.5 billion ringgit (US$579 million) plant in Perlis state on the border with Thailand.
He said Perlis Power, the sixth independent power producer to emerge since the state utility Tenaga Nasional lost its monopoly in 1992, would be given a license soon.
The gas-fired plant in Perlis will begin operating in late 1997 or early 1998, Samy Vellu said.
"It is my dream that Malaysia should become the region's supplier of power. And this is the first step towards that," he told reporters after opening a power seminar in Kuala Lumpur.
He said Perlis Power would build a link to supply power to Thailand, which he described as the first part of a power grid linking the Association of Southeast Asian Nations -- Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.
Samy Vellu added that he and the Malaysian government's economic adviser, Daim Zainuddin, would meet Thai officials next month to discuss the power supply deal.
He said YTL Corporation, which is building two power stations in Trengganu and Johor states, is discussing proposals to build a 500 MW plant to supply Singapore.
The minister said Malaysia was proposing similar power supply links with Indonesia, with a planned transmission line through the islands of Sumatra and Java.
Batam and Bintan
He said other ASEAN interconnection projects included the linking of Malaysia's Borneo states of Sarawak and Sabah with the sultanate of Brunei, and another connecting Malaysia's southern state of Johor, Singapore and the Indonesian islands of Batam and Bintan.
Malaysia had potential to generate and sell electricity from Sarawak and Sabah, he said. "We want both states to be the centralized area to supply power to the region."
Malaysia has already licensed Ekran to build a 2,400 MW hydro- electric power station in Bakun, Sarawak, which would supply power to all of Borneo including Indonesia's Kalimantan as well as peninsular Malaysia.
He said the six independent power producers in Malaysia, which are building seven power plants, would help give Malaysia an electricity surplus to sell to the region.
"We will have about 11,000 MW of power in 1997 when all the (power producers) and Tenaga Nasional plants come on line. Malaysia will only need about 8,000 MW and the rest will either be kept as reserve or sold," he said.