Bahrain’s Electricity & Water Authority (EWA) has opened financial bids from three firms for the consultancy contract on its planned Al-Dur 2 independent water and power project (IWPP).

EWA received bids from six consultancies in June, but chose to only open financial proposals from three firms on 10 November.

The bidders and prices are:

• HSBC (UK): BD1,179,300 ($3,129,777)
• KPMG Fakhro (Netherlands): BD616,375
• PwC (UK): stage one – BD824,535, stage 2 – BD525,127

EWA had retendered the consultancy deal after receiving just one proposal for the initial tender in March. The client had invited consultants to submit expressions of interest in August 2015.

The Al-Dur 2 IWPP is expected to include a 1,500MW gas-fired power generation facility.

It will form part of EWA’s strategy to ensure it has adequate capacity to cope with future demand for electricity. The demand growth rate for electricity in Bahrain dropped quite significantly following the GCC’s real estate crash in 2009. However, peak demand rebounded to 81 per cent in 2014 and EWA is expecting consumption to continue to rise by an average of up to 6.4 per cent until 2020.