Kuwait’s Electricity & Water Ministry has unveiled plans to develop a power and water plant at Khirran South.

A contract for the environmental study for the project is set to be signed in December and will take about six months to complete.

The project will comprise two 250MW steam turbines and a 50 million gallons a day (g/d) multi-stage flash (MSF) desalination unit, says Suhaila Marafi, director of the Electricity & Water Ministry’s department of studies and research.

The project will be developed on an using an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract. The winning bidder will provide both the power and water components of the project. The ministry will launch the tender after September 2011.

The project will be the first of several 500MW phases. The number of phases will be decided after the ministry’s consultant has completed site studies.

Kuwait currently has about 11GW in installed capacity and 450 million g/d in desalination capacity. At present, installed capacity exceeds peak demand. However, according to Electricity & Water Ministry figures, by 2012 the country’s installed power and water capacity will roughly equal demand.

As a result, the country has a programme of immediate and long-term capacity building projects which will all be built on an EPC basis, aside from a project at Al-Zour North, which will have a capacity of 1,500MW and 100 million g/d.