Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) is hoping to push through an amendment to the country’s independent water and power project (IWPP) law, which would enable the ministry to decide on the procurement of future major power projects.

Established in June 2010, law 39/2010, known as the IWPP law, stipulates than any power projects with a generating capacity greater than 500MW must be developed by the Partnerships Technical Bureau (PTB) under the public-private partnership (PPP) model. The PTB was established in 2008, under Kuwait’s PPP law, to oversee the country’s PPP projects.

Speaking at MEED’s Kuwait Energy & Water Efficiency conference, in Kuwait City on 3 June, Meshan al-Otaibi, assistant undersecretary of planning and training at the MEW, said he expected the amendment to be approved “very soon, maybe within the next month”.

In December, the final project agreements were signed on Kuwait’s first IWPP, Al-Zour North. A consortium of the UK/French GDF Suez, Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation and local Abdullah al-Hamad al-Sagar & Brothers (AH al-Sagar & Brothers) was awarded the contract to develop the power and water project. First launched in 2009, the Al-Zour North IWPP suffered from a series of delays and missed deadlines, and many within Kuwait’s power sector blamed the PTB for the protracted planning and tendering processes.

According to Al-Otaibi, already planned IWPP projects, such as the second, third and fourth phases of the Al-Zour scheme and the Al-Khiran IWPP, will probably go ahead as they are, but the MEW will choose whether future major power and desalination schemes proceed as IWPPs or be tendered as standard engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts.

In expectation of the impending approval of the amendment to Kuwait’s IWPP law, the MEW is already planning a 2,500MW power and water project, which it will tender itself. Al-Otaibi said the project was scheduled to be commissioned by 2020.