By IANS
New Delhi : State-run Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) appears set to be awarded a major contract for the supply of boilers for the 1,320-MW Barh stage-II thermal power project in Bihar, said officials.
For stage-I of the project, NTPC Ltd had awarded the contract worth Rs.19 billion to Russia-based power equipment supplier, Technopromoexport.
“BHEL is the only vendor that has bid for supply of boiler package for Barh-II. We plan to start negotiations with BHEL soon to arrive at an acceptable contract price,” a senior NTPC official told IANS.
The official said Italian power equipment major Ansaldo Coldaie had also expressed interest in bidding for the project but failed to meet key technical conditions specified in the tender.
He expressed hope that the price discovered in bidding for supply of boiler package to the 3X660 MW Barh Stage-I project should be agreed upon by both sides as a key benchmark for reaching a negotiated contract price for Barh-II.
Technopromexport, which outbid BHEL and South Korea’s Doosan to bag the NTPC contract for supply of boiler package to the Barh-I project, did not show interest in bidding for the capacity expansion.
Significantly, NTPC had raised a controversy when it awarded the contract for the first boiler package to the Russian company, defying a directive from the then power secretary R.V. Shahi not to go ahead.
Shahi had asked the NTPC management to make bidding conditions more flexible in order to ensure wider competition for the contract.
BHEL had recently entered into supercritical power plant equipment manufacturing in view of the huge capacity addition envisaged in this area. Alstom and Siemens were its partners for sourcing technology.
Officials said the bid opening for another NTPC contract for the supply of turbine generator package to Barh-II is scheduled for Oct 16.