Lignite coal plant to be built

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

Minister Yıldız (C) looks on as the TKI General Manager Mustafa Aktaş (L) and Teyo Chairman Korkmaz exchange signed documents. AA photo

Teyo Yatırım, a Turkish investment firm, and Chinese partner Weiqu Energy Investment have announced plans to construct a lignite coal power plant with a 600-megawatt capacity in the southern province of Adana’s Tufanbeyli coal field.

“Our company will build a 600-megawatt power plant with a $1.2 billion investment in six years. The plant will produce minimum 3.6 billion kilowatts per hour and [the joint venture] will pay nearly $50 million in royalties per year to the TKİ [Turkish Coal Enterprises] in return [for operating the coal field]. This will continue for 30 years,” Reuters quoted Teyo Yatırım Chairman Feridun Korkmaz as saying.

Teyo Yatırım won the tender to build the 600-megawatt power plant at the Tufanbeyli coal field by offering 2.57 kuruş per kilowatt hour on May 29.

Noting that the investment will create 2,000 jobs, Korkmaz said, “We will be very happy if we can contribute to the policy of getting rid of natural gas [in power generation] by regenerating the domestic lignite reserves.”

Turkey is an attractive country and the Chinese government has a lot of interest in investing in the country, said Weiqu representative James Wu, according to Anatolia news agency. “Tufanbeyli will be a very good investment. We are interested in new projects in Turkey.”

Royalty model

The Energy Ministry has developed a model of obtaining royalties from electric production instead of charging for coal for 30 years, Energy Minister Taner Yıldız recently said.

“We give the coal [to the electricity producer], and they start paying us after the electricity production starts. We support serious investors for 30 years. We supply about 330 million tons of low-calorie coal here,” he said.

“Electricity production from domestic coal will increase every day. We will initiate a new tender for the Soma [coal fields in Manisa] at the end of August,” he said.

The TKİ will open a tender on Aug. 28 for a power plant with a capacity of 450 megawatts utilizing the 153 million tons of coal to be mined.

Yıldız said the goal was to increase the total thermal power capacity based on coal to between 17,000 and 18,000 megawatts.