Source:Â www.reuters.com
French engineering group Alstom signed a 50 million euros ($65.7 million) contract to rehabilitate a gas-fired power station in Iraq, it said in a statement on Wednesday.
Alstom will work on two units of the Khor Al Zubair station in the southern city of Basra, adding 60 MW to the power supply. The first unit will be reconnected in 2012 and the second before the summer of 2013, the company said.
Nine years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s electricity grid still provides only intermittent power and little progress has been made increasing the output from its vast oil and gas fields.
Alstom is already taking part in Iraq projects such as the Nineveh power plant and the Baghdad metro.
Iraq plans to boost the national grid’s capacity by about 1,500 MW in the next few months, Salam Qazaz, a deputy electricity minister said in February. More info
