China’s Harbin Power Engineering Company and South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries submitted bids for the lump-sum turnkey engineering, procurement and construction contract on 31 May.

An award was expected in August but according to a project source, the project is not likely to be awarded before the end of October.

Under the 54-month contract,the successful bidder will build a 2,400MW power plant and a 3.4 million-gallon-a-day reverse osmosis desalination plant (MEED 21:7:08).