The $120m engineering, procurement and construction contract involves the construction of a dedicated power facility for the country’s largest phosphate mine.

The plant will be powered by three turbines, to be supplied by the US’ GE, each with a capacity of about 22MW.

“First power from the plant will come on stream in the second half of 2009, and will be ramped up progressively,” says Steve Wilson, a senior spokesman for the state-owned Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Maaden), one of the partners on the mine development.

The company has identified 534 million tonnes of phosphate rock at Al-Jalamid, and the figure could rise to 2 billion tonnes. Mining is due to begin in late 2009.

The Al-Jalamid mine is part of an integrated fertiliser scheme being developed by Maaden Phosphate Company, a 70:30 joint venture of Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Maaden) and state-owned Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic).

The $5.6bn scheme includes a series of processing facilities at Ras Al-Zour on the Gulf coast to convert phosphate rock from Al-Jalamid into fertilisers for export.

Meedco is a joint venture of South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering & Construction and local investors.