Oman’s Musandam Power Company has invited contractors to express interest in building a 120MW independent power project (IPP) in the Musandam governorate.

The 120MW power plant will be primarily fuelled by natural gas, with a back-up facility for using fuel oil. The plant’s technology will be based on reciprocating engines or gas turbines, in open or combined cycle configuration. Contractors were requested to submit expressions of interest by 11 January.

The engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract will involve building, commissioning and testing the power plant.

The Musandam Power Company is a new entity being established by a consortium of the Oman Oil Company and South Korea’s LG International Corporation. The Musandam Power Company will develop the power plant under the supervision of the Oman Power and Water Procurement Company (OPWP).

The gas-fired power plant is part of a strategy to move Musandam away from diesel-fired power generation. The governorate currently relies on small diesel-fired units, which may be retained for back-up security once the gas-fired power plant is operational.

The power plant is being built in parallel with the Musandam gas plant, which will have the capacity to treat 45 million standard cubic feet a day of gas and 20,000 barrels a day of crude oil. The $600m gas processing plant is currently being built by South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering.