JEDDAH — Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) has named Black & Veatch as Owner's Engineer for the Qassim II &III Conversion. The project will generate additional power without using significantly more fuel. This comes at a time when Saudi Arabia is seeking to improve its power generation efficiency. Qassim Power Plant serves the people of Buraydah, the capital of Qassim region, in the heart of the Arabian Peninsula. The power plant is being expanded to meet the increasing demand of power in this region through a conversion from simple cycle operation to combined cycle operation. “We are helping SEC enhance Qassim to meet the local community's increasing need for power,” said Mazen Alami, Managing Director, Middle East at Black & Veatch. “Black & Veatch is a recognized leader in the best practices and technology shaping power generation. In addition to helping the utility meet its goal of more efficient power generation infrastructure, our role will help develop local skills through knowledge transfer to SEC's engineers,” he added. The project will convert 12 oil fired simple cycle combustion turbines to combined cycle operation; this will increase generation capacity by approximately 360 MW. The conversion project was tendered on an engineer, procure, construct (EPC) basis. Black & Veatch's role is to work closely with SEC to provide engineering, procurement, and construction oversight and supervision and to provide theoretical and practical training for SEC engineers. Black & Veatch has been serving the Middle East since 1920s, undertaking projects that enhance quality of life: power generation to support economic development, and water sanitation to improve health. Black & Veatch's energy business has been working in Saudi Arabia since the 1970s. Before the signing of the Qassim contract, the company's most recent work for SEC was Power Plant 3 (PP3) expansion project in Jeddah. Demand for electricity in Saudi Arabia is growing at a significant annual rate of approximately 8%. It is expected that, the demand for 2030 will be about 120 GW. Meeting this demand requires a significant investment in new power plants as well as an upgrade using advanced transmission technologies, the goal of which is to increase transmission capacity. The estimated investment over the next 10 years is expected to be more than SR50 billion. Based on the current electricity generation, which relies solely on oil and natural gas, by year 2030, this amounts to a consumption of approximately 3 million barrels of oil each day. Because oil exports are the country's primary source of revenue, the increase in oil consumption in order to meet the ever-growing demand for electricity will have significant negative ramifications for the Saudi Arabian economy for generations to come. There is a real and urgent need for strategic and comprehensive planning to adopt alternative sources of energy. The Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation estimates that Gulf states will require as much as $316 billion by 2020 to meet its growing power needs. To date, the Gulf's power sector has leveraged its strength as a fossil fuel producer to source cheap and plentiful power for the domestic economy. But that is an expensive and increasingly unsustainable strategy. Crude oil is seen as an inefficient energy source for power generation and most economies have moved away from oil and focused on natural gas, hydro, nuclear or renewables to generate electricity. But countries like Saudi Arabia still depend on crude oil for power – and that's a trend that's likely to continue in the absence of alternatives. Oil-fired generation is forecast to gain 27 percent over 2013-19 on the back of insufficiently growing gas production and the very low efficiency of Saudi power plants, according to the International Energy Agency. Saudi Arabia is the world's 12th largest consumer of energy, accounting for 9 quadrillion British thermal units – of which 60 percent was sourced from petroleum and the rest from natural gas. The country now consumes three million barrels per day of crude oil domestically – roughly a third of its production. If the country can switch to renewable or natural gas, those three million bpd can generate as much as $180 million per day at today's spot Brent prices. — SG
