A joint venture of Germany's Lentjes Bischoff with the local Pasiner has been selected for a contract valued at about $51 million for the installation of two flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) units at the Yenikoy power station, project sources say. The venture submitted the lowest price in the tender invited by the Turkish Electricity Generation & Transmission Corporation (TEAS - MEED 22:8:97).

However, the European Investment Bank, which is providing finance for the project, needs to approve the award before a formal contract is signed. The FGD units will cut down on pollutants from the plant's slow-burning and sulphurous lignite fuel, and will take about two years to install once a contract is signed.

The 420-MW Yenikoy plant is one of three in the southwest Mugla province under attack by environmental groups. The government has overridden a regional court order for the plants' closure on environmental grounds, however, because of their importance in supplying energy to a significant industrial and touristic region.

FGD units will also operate at the other two plants, the Kemerkoy and Yatagan stations, each having a capacity of 630 MW. However, a final contract signature with a venture of Canada's Babcock & Wilcox with the local Gama for the Kemerkoy units is being held up by negotiations with the treasury on a financing package arranged by ABN AMRO. The treasury considers that the package's interest rates are too high, project sources say. Work on a $77 million contract to install FGD units at Yatagan has started, however, by a venture of Lentjes Bischoff and the local Guris.

Evaluation of bids for a much larger lignite-fired power project, Afsin- Elbistan B in south central Anatolia, is likely to be completed by the end of December, the sources say. Low bidder in June to TEAS was Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and the US' Babcock Lentjes with Gama, Tekfen, Tokar and Enka, with a price of $1,510 million (MEED 4:7:97).

The plant will have four 350-MW generating units, fired by lignite mined from abundant nearby reserves totalling about 3.5 million tonnes, about half of Turkey's total reserves of lignite. The first unit is to be operational by 2001, the second and third in 2002, and the fourth in 2003.

The Energy Ministry decided to tender Afsin-Elbistan B on a conventional, credit-financed basis, after no bids were received in spring 1996 for the project on a private basis (MEED 26:4:96).