Price set for Grati power plant

Price set for Grati power plant

JAKARTA (JP): The government has approved the price of
electricity from a private gas-fueled power project at Grati in
Pasuruan, East Java. The price per kilowatt hour (kWh) will be
5.88 U.S. cents, an official announced here yesterday.

The Private Electricity Director of the Ministry of Mines and
Energy, Moeljadi Oetji, said the price is based on the assumption
that the cost of natural gas from the state-owned oil company
Pertamina will be $2.84 per million British Thermal Units.

He told The Jakarta Post that the US$1 billion power project,
which will have a generation capacity of 500 megawatts, will soon
be under construction by a consortium made up of Enron of the
United States and PT Jawa Energy Power, a company controlled by
tycoon Ibrahim Risjad.

The government now allows private investors to establish power
plants in Indonesia on the condition that they sell their
electricity to the state electricity company PLN, which will then
sell it to the public.

The electricity price for the Grati project will be far lower
than the price levels set for two other power projects currently
being built by private investors.

Two coal-fired power stations are being built at Paiton in
East Java, at a cost of $2.1 billion, by a consortium made up of
Siemens AG of Germany and the Bimantara Group of Indonesia. They
will have a combined capacity of 1,200 megawatts and the price of
electricity generated by them will be 6.09 cents per kWh.

Another consortium, made up of the Dutch subsidiary of Mission
Energy of the United States, Mitsui Co. Ltd. of Japan, General
Electric Co. of the United States and PT Batu Hitam Perkasa of
Indonesia, will sell its electricity to PLN for 8.56 cents per
kWH for the first six years. For the six-year period after that,
the price will be 8.41 cents and for the remaining 18 years of
the contract the price will be 5.54 cents.

The new power stations are expected to start operating in
1998. (04)