AMMAN - Jordan and an Estonian firm are closing in on an agreement to build the one of the largest power plants in the world that runs on oil shale.
According to Harri Mikk, chairman of Eesti Energia subsidiary Jordan Oil Shale Energy Co., the firm and the government are closing in on an agreement to construct Jordan's first oil shale-fired thermal power station.
The plant, a 700-megawatt (MW) structure, is to be built in the central region of Attarat to take advantage of the area's shale reserves - estimated at several billion tonnes.
An energy ministry official, who was not authorised to speak to the press, confirmed that negotiations between the two sides are "ongoing", expecting a deal to be reached by the end of the year.
According to Mikk, electricity produced by the plant, to be operational as early as 2016, will be cost-competitive with electricity generated by traditional fossil fuels.
"The electricity produced by the plant will be competitive with international gas and oil prices, and most importantly, it will be Jordanian," Mikk told The Jordan Times in a recent phone interview.
If Eesti Energia and Jordan go forward with the project, the plant is set to be among the largest oil shale-fired thermal stations in the world, second only to Estonia's Nova power plants, which generate a combined 2,300MW.
Under a separate project, Eesti Energia is conducting oil shale exploration in a 40-kilometre concession zone in the central region: an area expected to yield up to 36,000 barrels of shale oil per day.
The power plant project comes as energy officials in Amman search for alternatives to Egyptian natural gas, which the Kingdom relies on for 80 per cent of its electricity generation and which has been the target of a series of attacks in the Sinai peninsula.
The most recent attack on the Arab Gas Pipeline forced the country's power plants to tap into their diesel and heavy fuel oil reserves at a cost of JD3 million per day.
Ongoing disruptions in gas supplies have ballooned the budget deficit and are expected to push the national energy bill to record levels, over JD4 billion, by the end of the year.
Jordan's oil shale reserves - the third-largest in the world - are to account for 14 per cent of the Kingdom's energy mix by the end of the decade under the national energy strategy.
In addition to the project in the central region, a British firm is to extract up to 15,000 barrels per day from a site near Karak by 2016, while Royal Dutch Shell is exploring the application of its experimental in situ conversion technology to extract shale oil from the Kingdom's reserves along the border with Iraq.
Jordan currently imports some 98 per cent of its energy needs at a cost of 23 per cent of the country's gross domestic product.
© Jordan Times 2011
