By:Zawya

Mauritania is seeking bids in the next two to three weeks for a new 550 megawatt (MW) power plant tied to the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) liquefied natural gas (LNG) project through a public-private partnership (PPP).

“All new power generation projects in Mauritania will be private,” Minister of Petroleum and Energy Mohamed Ould Khaled told the “Invest in African Energy 2025 Forum” in Paris last week.

“State-owned companies will no longer be involved in power generation,” he said, adding the country has introduced a new local content policy and implemented new PPP and investment codes.

Two projects, developed as IPPs, will be fuelled by domestic gas and contribute 550 MW to the national grid over the next couple of years.

The power sector reform is part of a broader transformation to enable Mauritania to harness its gas and renewable energy resources to power industrialisation.

Khaled said that LNG from the GTA project, shared with Senegal, will supply enough fuel for a 250 MW combined-cycle power plant in each country during the project’s first phase.

Mauritania, located in northwest Africa, is seeking to expand the BirAllah conventional gas field and the subsequent phases of the GTA project to reach 10 million tonnes of LNG per year.