Senegal Plant Might Switch to Gas: World Bank
A new oil-fired power station built in Senegal could in future be converted to gas at minor cost, should any of the major offshore gas resources be developed for the home market, the World Bank has suggested, whilst admitting it is "still early days."
Senegal’s President Macky Sall attended the inauguration on March 14 of the already working heavy fuel oil-fired Tobene power plant, according to the local press. It cost €125mn and took 14 months to build and is 90 km northeast of the capital Dakar.
Last year the World Bank provided financing guarantees and a small loan to its owner Melec PowerGen (MPG), part of Lebanon-based Matelec Group, for the 87.5-MW Tobene project. It was built under a 20-year build-own-operate contract with local utility Senelec, which signed the power purchase agreement in October 2011 for a guaranteed offtake of 70 MW with 91% availability.
The World Bank is a multi-billion dollar supporter of clean power projects across Africa although a heavy fuel oil-fired plant would normally not fit its normal lending criteria. However it noted last year that Tobene plant “has the capacity to be converted to operate on natural gas.”
Earlier on March 16, Kosmos announced that its Greater Tortue complex straddling the Mauritania and Senegal offshore border now has estimated gross gas resources of over 20 trillion ft3 but indicates its primary interest was on developing these into a potential "world class” LNG export project.
A spokeswoman for the Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) told Natural Gas Africa on March 15 that “Tobene has been built under specifications that will permit a future conversion to natural gas, with its MAN engines easily convertible at a minor cost. This has created an option value for the development of the sector in the future. In particular, a number of discoveries both in Senegal (Kosmos) and in neighbouring countries (Banda) opens up various possibilities."
Last year Tullow, operator of the Banda gas field offshore Mauritania, decided that it would not fund any development of the latter in 2015.
The IFC spokeswoman noted: “It is still early days in the development of these discoveries, but given Tobene's ability to run on gas, and favourable geographic location, the plant is likely to be indeed converted in the future to gas once the gas is available."
Tobene “consists of MAN engines and a heat recovery system that uses the exhaust heat to generate additional electricity through a steam turbine,” explained the IFC spokeswoman. “The engines have been installed and the plant is fully operational on a simple cycle, delivering 70 MW to the grid. Over the coming months, the heat-recovery system and steam turbine will be installed to convert Tobene into a combined-cycle plant. The cost of the plant was approximately €125mn.”
MPG built and operates another power plant that also supplies Senelec: the 67.5-MW diesel-fueled Kounoune plant opened in 2008.
Mark Smedley