The UK/Japanese group of International Power (IP) and Marubeni Corporation has signed a 20-year power and water purchase agreement with the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Company (Adwec).

Under the agreement, the plant will be owned by the Fujairah Asia Power Company, in which IP has a 20 per cent stake, with a further 20 per cent stake held by Marubeni. The rest of the company is divided between the Abu Dhabi Water & Electricity Authority and Abu Dhabi Energy Company (Taqa).

Fujairah Asia Power Company will build, own and operate the 2,000-MW, 130 million-gallon-a-day-(g/d) co-generation plant. The nominated engineering, procurement and construction contractor is Paris-based Alstom Power for the power island and Veolia subsidiary Sidem for the desalination. The desalination plant will use 12 multi-effect distillation units with capacity of 8.3 million g/d each, and a 30 million g/d reverse osmosis plant. Natural gas to fuel the power plant will be supplied by Adwec under the PWPA. Commercial operations are due to start by 2010 (MEED 23:10:07).