Syria’s Public Establishment for Electrical Generation & Transfer (PEEGT) has appointed the UK’s Mott MacDonald as technical consultant to advise on the country’s first independent power project (IPP).

Bids for the technical advisory contract were also submitted by US firms KPM and MPR. The deadline for submissions was 24 February.

A separate tender for legal advisory services is expected to follow with request for proposal (RFP) documents to be sent to local law firms within the next week.

The project will be built on a site adjacent to an existing power plant at Al-Nasserieh, 60 kilometres north of Damascus. It will have capacity of 220-250MW and will operate as a duel-fuel facility using natural gas with diesel or fuel oil.

The government is being advised by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector investment arm of the World Bank Group.

In addition to assisting in the technical and legal advisory tenders, the IFC is helping the government select a developer for the project.

In November 2009, Damascus prequalified two consortiums, the Marafeq consortium consisting of the local Cham Holding and several Kuwaiti firms, and Finland’s Wartsila with Greece’s Terna Energy, before the IFC joined the project (MEED 13:11:09).

Further groups could be added to the shortlist.

The project is set to benefit from finance sourced from European donors. PEEGT and the IFC are now holding talks with the Belgian government.

PEEGT has a monopoly in the Syrian power generation and transmission market, with total installed capacity of 7,800MW.