By NNN-KUNA
Tokyo : Japan's second-biggest trading house Mitsui Co has said it has won a USD 1.3 billion order from the Kuwait government to build a power and desalination plant at Shuaiba, about 50 km south of Kuwait City.
Mitsui has received an unofficial notice from Kuwait's Ministry of Electricity and Water, the firm said in a statement, adding that a formal agreement will be sealed in July, with the facility slated to go into operation as early as 2010. The project is one of Mitsui's largest infrastructure orders in the Middle East.
The Tokyo-based trading giant will construct a cogeneration facility in which power is first generated through gas turbines and then exhaust heat spins stream turbines to generate more power. It will also build a desalination plant that boils seawater using exhaust heat from the steam turbines.
The facility will have an output capacity of 750 megawatts of power, enough to supply the equivalent of some 300,000 households. It will also be able to produce about 200,000 tons of water daily, according to Mitsui.
The Japanese firm will be the lead contractor in the full-turnkey project, and handle overall planning, procurement, engineering and installation.
It plans to order the power generation equipment from South Korea's Hyundai Engineering Construction Co and desalination equipment from Italian engineering firm Fisia Italimpianti.
Mitsui has recently won projects in Abu Dhabi and Jordan for power generation plants, as well as a railway construction project in Saudi Arabia.
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