Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) has signed agreements with the local Acwa Power, South Korea’s Samsung C&T and UAE-based Mena Infrastructure Fund for the 3,927MW Qurayyah independent power project (IPP). Signing took place on 21 September.

The project company, Hajr for Electricity Production Company, has been established with the winning consortium and SEC owning 50 per cent each.

The project, to be developed on a build-own-operate (BOO) basis, will be located at Qurayyah, on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, adjacent to existing SEC facilities.

Qurayyah IPP will comprise six identical groups of equipment, each delivering a net output of 654.5MW. Each group comprises two gas turbines, two heat recovery steam generators and one steam turbine.

The project will deliver electricity to SEC under a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) commencing on 30 June 2014. Germany’s Siemens has been selected to provide all major equipment and electrical systems, while Samsung C&T will be the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor.

Once completed, the plant will be operated by the First National Operation & Maintenance Company (Nomac), a subsidiary of Acwa Power, under a long-term operation and maintenance contract, with Siemens providing parts and services for the gas turbines under a long-term service agreement with Nomac.

The SR10.69bn ($2.85bn) project will be financed through 77 per cent debt, split equally between US dollars and Saudi Arabian riyals. The US-dollar facilities will include tranches funded or covered by three export credit agencies: South Korea’s Kexim, US-based Export-Import Bank (Exim) and Germany’s Hermes.

The international bank group providing funds are the UK’s HSBC, Germany’s KfW, the UK’s Standard Chartered and Japan’s SMBC. The local bank group is Banque Saudi Fransi, National Commercial Bank, Samba and Sabb.