Tunisia’s Industry, Energy & Small & Medium Enterprises Ministry has received three bids to build the planned Bizerte independent power project (IPP).

Bids were submitted by the following partnerships:

• Siemens (Germany)/Powertek (Malaysia) – offer priced at 105.337 millimes ($0.07) per kilowatt hour (kWh) based on a power plant with a capacity of 405MW
• International Power (UK)/Marubeni (Japan) – offer priced at 124.754 millimes per kWh based on a power plant with a capacity of 423MW
• Mitsui (Japan)/Taqa (UAE) – offer priced at 128.888 millimes per kWh based on a power plant with a capacity of 435.9MW

Bids were opened on 31 May after the deadline for bids was delayed on several occasions. The original bid submission date of 29 January was extended to 30 April (MEED 12:1:10), before being set for the end of May.

While Siemens and Powertek submitted the lowest bid, the offers are yet to be evaluated. The inclusion of fuel escalation costs into the pricing of the lowest bid has already been questioned.

The 350-500MW Bizerte IPP is scheduled to come online in 2014. The winning bidder will develop the project on a build-own-operate basis under a 20-year concession.

The developer will have the option to double the capacity of the plant at a later date. State utility Societe Tunisienne de l’Electricite et du Gaz (Steg) will buy the plant’s output.

Tunisia is simultaneously tendering another IPP at Elmed. A request for qualification (RFQ) for the 1,200MW project was issued at the end of April. Interested parties have until 26 July to respond (MEED 26:4:10).