Two of the projects will come up in the kingdom's Taiba city, while the other two will be in Qassim city

Saudi Power Procurement Company (SPPC) has announced that 21 major developer/developer consortiums including global energy leader GE, French utility major EDF, Samsung and India's energy conglomerate NTPC have prequalified for the development of four combined-cycle electrical power generation projects with provision for Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) readiness.

Of these Independent Power Plant (IPP) projects with a total capacity 7,200 MW, two of them will come up in the kingdom's Taiba city, while the other two will be in Qassim city.

Each of the projects - The Taiba IPP 1; Taiba IPP 2; Qassim IPP 1 and Qassim IPP 2 - will boast a capacity of 1,800 MW.

The list of the pre-qualified bidders (Financial and/or Technical) for the project include global energy leader General Electric Company; French utility major EDF; Japanese groups - Marubeni; Kansai Electric Power; Sumitomo; Jera and Sojitz Corporation - and top Korean firms Samsung C&T and Korea Electric Power Corporation in addition to India's largest energy conglomerate NTPC.

TradeArabia had last month announced that the requests for proposals (RFPs) had been issued by SPCC for these combined-cycle electrical power generation projects.

The top regional firms in the race include UAE groups - Abu Dhabi energy company Taqa; Kahrabel FZE (a unit of French utility developer Engie) - Kuwait-based Gulf Investment Corporation and Qatar's Nebras Power as well as leading Egyptian builder Orascom Construction.

The local firms which have now been prequalified are Saudi utility giant Acwa Power; Saudi Electricity Company; Power and Water Utility Company for Jubail and Yanbu (Marafiq) and Alfanar Company.

Also two key developers have made it to the prequalified bidders list but as developer consortiums -Ajlan Brothers with China Power International Holding and Al Jomaih Energy and Water with Edra Power Holdings.