LIBYA - The Electric Power Sector.
Libya's power generating capacity is 5 GW. But the peak load in the summer has been high and there were blackouts in the summer during the past three years. There could be blackouts during this summer as well.
An outlay of $3.5 bn is being spent on eight combined cycle and steam cycle power plants. Capacity is to reach 5.8 GW by 2010 and 8 GW by 2020.
The General Electricity Corp. (Gecol), Libya's state-owned unit in charge of this sector, has been very slow in implementing capacity expansions (see background of Gecol's projects in Vol. 61, DT No. 1).
The Mediterranean Electric Ring, an EU-financed project, will eventually connect all the power networks around the Mediterranean. This was officially launched on Feb. 8, 2001 in Nice. Most of the project has been completed, and Libya should benefit from this later in 2007.
Apart from the power projects, the government has been spending heavily on water resources. Dong-Ah Construction of South Korea has had a contract worth about $3.575 bn to build Phase 1 of the $30 bn Great Man-Made River (GMR) project. The aim of this is to carry water from the underground wells of southern and central Libya to the northern coast for agricultural and other needs. The sources include a huge underground water reservoir in Kufra in the deep south.
Phase 2, a 500-km pipeline to link the Jaghboub well field with Tobruk, is under construction. Phase 3 will involve drilling and development of wellheads in Kufra and a 500-km pipeline linking them with the Phase 1 network. But Phase 1 is flowing below the rate of 2m CM/d.
Qadhafi's goal is to make Libya "green" by creating 180,000 hectares of farmland and achieving self-sufficiency in food. The GMR project, which started in 1985 and should be complete in this century, has been ridiculed by his critics as uncompetitive and impractical.
Notes about that subject:
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