PODGORICA (Montenegro), November 9 (SeeNews) – Montenegro said it opened on Monday a prequalification tender for awarding a coal exploration concession and subsequent construction of a 500-megawatt thermal power plant.
The country, which has an installed generation capacity of 868 MW, suffers persistent power shortages and imports a third of the electricity it needs. Almost two-thirds of the Montenegrin electricity output is generated by two big hydro power plants, Perucica and Piva, and around one-third is contributed by its sole thermal power plant Pljevlja.
The exploration concession will be awarded on an area of 14.5 square kilometers in the Maoce coal reserve in northestern Montenegro located 15 kilometres by air from the Plevlja power station, the Economy Ministry said on its website. The concession comes with a condition to build a power plant.
Interested bidders should have had revenue of 500 million euro ($750 million) in each of the past three years and either total assets exceding 1.5 billion euro, or at least a credit rating of “BBB minus” from Standard & Poor’s or Fitch, or a “Baa3” rating from Moody’s.
Bidders should also meet all the following technical conditions – to have experience in electricity production from coal-fired power plants and in particular to own a 1,000 megawatts coal-fired power plant and have produced at least 6,000 gigawatthours in each of the past three years. They also should be experienced in managing coal mines and should have produced at least 2.0 million tonnes in each of the past three business years.
The deadline for filing prequalification bids is February 6, 2010, the statement said.
($=0.6660 euro)