Oman Power & Water Procurement (OPWP) Company may be advised under call-off contracts with financial, legal and technical advisers for the country’s next independent power project (IPP).

OPWP has several call-off contracts with financial, legal and technical consultants. The contracts are framework agreements covering a set period of time, rather than advisory contracts that cover services for a specific project.

According to OPWP, it may use advisers on call-off contracts for its 300MW IPP at Salalah. OPWP has successfully tendered a series of private power projects in the past and the latest facility will imitate the structure of the original IPP at Salalah. Therefore, a designated set of advisers may not be necessary. Alternatively, OPWP may opt to tender for advisers to work specifically on the project as it has done for previous private power and water projects.

OPWP has an ambitious tendering schedule to follow. OPWP will issue a request for qualification to developers in the second quarter of 2012, which will be followed by a request for proposals in the same month. Bids will be submitted by the first quarter of 2013 with an award soon afterwards. OPWP expects the project to come online by the first quarter of 2015.

The new power plant will join another independent project in the Salalah system, which is separated from the main interconnected system (MIS) of Oman. The independent water and power project is currently under construction and will have a capacity of 445MW of power and 15 million gallons a day of water when complete.

OPWP expects peak power demand to increase from 356MW currently to 719MW by 2017. The new Salalah IPP will help meet this demand increase.