Kuwait has retendered the transaction advisory (TA) role in the country’s first utilities asset up for privatisation – the North Shuaiba power and water plant – fixing a submission date of September 26 for bid submission by financial advisory firms.

The project, being overseen by Kuwait’s Supreme Council for Privatisation (SCP), first saw tender documents for advisory roles issued in June last year and received bids for the financial advisory contract in December. The North Shuaiba plant has an estimated value of about $1.2bn and the scope for its privatisation remains unchanged for the latest tender, sources with knowledge of the project were quoted as saying in media reports.

At present, the North Shuaiba power plant is being operated by a private company under an operation and maintenance (O&M) agreement that was due to expire in mid-2020. The plant is a dual-fuel combined-cycle facility, operating primarily on gas, with liquid oil as back-up when gas is not available. It has a power generation capacity of 778mW along with a multi-stage flash (MSF) desalination plant with a capacity of 45 million imperial gallons a day (MIGD).The privatisation of the facility will be delivered in three phases with Phase 1 comprising company incorporation and valuation wherein a Kuwaiti shareholding company will be established into which assets of the plant will be transferred. The shareholding company and its assets will be valued after the completion of the first phase,

The second stage is the tendering stage in which shares in the shareholding company will be tendered to investors in accordance with Kuwait’s Privatisation Law. This stage will include carrying out rehabilitation works on the project to improve the operation of the plant.

The third and last stage will involve share transfer to employees and the Kuwaiti public in line with Kuwait’s Privatisation Law.