Oman Power & Water Procurement Company (OPWP) has named advisers for its next independent power project (IPP) at Salalah.

The UK’s PricewaterhouseCoopers will be financial adviser on the project, the UK’s DLA Piper will be legal adviser and Germany’s Fichtner will be technical adviser. OPWP invited bids for each advisory service separately.

Early plans for the project estimated the new capacity at 250MW in power and 10 million gallons a day of (g/d) water. However, the Salalah project expansion will “most likely be an IPP, rather than an independent water and power project, although a final decision [is] pending”.

The project will join two other independent projects in the Salalah system, which is separated from the main interconnected system (MIS) of Oman. The latest IWPP is currently under construction and will have a capacity of 445MW of power and 15 million g/d of water when complete.

In the Salalah system, peak demand is forecast to grow at a rate of 10 per cent a year from 348MW in 2011 to 689MW in 2018. Under a low-case scenario, demand would be expected to rise by 7 per cent a year. Should more rapid industrialisation take place, demand could grow by as much as 17 per cent a year.