Siemens signs 305 million euro contract for Syria power plant

Siemens AG signed a 305 million-euro ($419 million) contract to add 351 megawatts of generating capacity to a power station in Syria, according to the country’s Electricity Minister Imad Khamis.

The Munich-based company will add a combined-cycle unit to the Nasserieh plant, located 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Damascus, within 28 months from the start of construction, he said today at a signing ceremony in the capital.

Syria has secured about 200 million euros for the project, he said, without saying if those were grants or loans. The rest will be covered by the government or through loans, he said. The loans that Syria has already received include 525 million Saudi Arabian riyals ($140 million) from the Saudi Fund for Development, according to a ministry statement.

The facility will run on natural gas as a main fuel, Khamis said. Siemens has previously worked on three other projects in Syria that added more than 1,000 megawatts to the country’s total generation capacity, he said.

Siemens was awarded the Nasserieh contract in 2009, Marcus Brueckner, a senior vice president for the Middle East at Siemens, told reporters after the ceremony. He didn’t say why the agreement hadn’t been signed since then.