Kuwait Authority for Partnership Projects (KAPP) is preparing to invite consultants to submit proposals for advisory roles on the next planned phase of its Al-Zour North independent water and power plant (IWPP) facility.

The next Al-Zour North IWPP will replace the previous Al-Zour North 2 IWPP scheme, for which bids had been received in 2016 before the tender was cancelled in August this year. The next phase will merge the planned second and third phases, and is planned to have a generation capacity of 2,700MW and a desalination capacity of 165 million imperial gallons a day (MIGD).

According to sources close to the project, the consultancy contracts will be tendered by the end of the first quarter of 2018, with an aim to tender the main developer contract by the first quarter of 2019.

KAPP had received bids from three developers for the Al-Zour North 2 IWPP in June 2016, and had invited two of the three bidders for clarification meetings and further negotiations. The project faced several delays in the prequalification and bidding stages. The remaining two bidders, led by Japanese developers Marubeni and Sumitomo, were asked in March this year to extend bid bonds by six months from April to October. However, the client cancelled the project in August, with no official reason for the cancellation provided.

The original Al-Zour North 2 IWPP was planned to have a power generation capacity of 1,500MW and a desalination component of at least 102 million imperial gallons a day (MIGD). The planned Al-Zour North 3 IWPP was originally planned to have a power generation capacity of 1,800MW and a desalination component of 75 MIGD.

Kuwait’s first IWPP, Al-Zour North 1, was fully commissioned in late 2016. Following a number of delays with the tendering of the country’s first IWPP, the government amended the PPP law in 2014 and reformed the PPP body, changing its name to KAPP from the Partnerships Technical Bureau (PTB).

It introduced Law 116/2014 (the PPP Law), which superseded the previous law for PPP projects in Kuwait. The law restructured the PPP programme and codified some of the methods used in the procurement of the Al-Zour North IWPP to provide a comprehensive structure for procuring major projects. The executive regulations were published in March 2015.