SEC, currently 80 percent owned by the government with a float of 20 percent on the Saudi stock market, manages 37,000 megawatts of power generation capacity from some 45 plants.
“SEC currently owns generation, distribution and transmission and we would like to see this unbundled. Our requirement is by mid-2010,” Abdullah Al-Shehri, vice governor for regulatory affairs at Saudi Arabia’s Electricity and Cogeneration Authority, said.
The government also plans to carve out two new companies for power transmission and distribution, he said.
“We want SEC to be a holding company and to own four generation companies as well as the transmission and distribution companies,” Shehri said on the sidelines of a conference in the United Arab Emirates capital Abu Dhabi. The four new generation companies, which would each have capacity of about 9,000 megawatts, could look into strategic partnerships and sell assets, he said.
“Our aim is to create competition and encourage privatisation,” Shehri said, adding that demand for power in Saudi Arabia is growing at 6 percent annually.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power International has secured $ 2bn financing for its Rabigh power plant projects, its chief executive said yesterday.
ACWA, a developer of privately financed power generation and desalinated water plants, has secured $ 1.4bn of that financing from Saudi banks and the remainder from abroad, Paddy Padmanathan said.
“We are working to a financial close before the end of May this year,” Padmanathan said in an interview at a MEED conference in the United Arab Emirates’ capital Abu Dhabi.
Regional utilities in the Gulf region are struggling to expand capacity to deal with fast-rising power demand, despite the global economic slowdown.
