Turkish floating power plant not coming to Cambodia

The government has cancelled a contract it signed last week to bring a powership from Turkey to cope with the current energy deficit.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Friday, Prime Minister Hun Sen announced the agreement signed with Turkey to rent a 200-megawatt floating power plant has been cancelled due to “technical issues”.

According to Phay Siphan, the government’s spokesman, the main reason the contract was terminated is that the powership would take too long to reach the Kingdom’s shore.

“Our prime minister decided to cancel the contract because the powership would not have reached here on time to help with the power cuts,” he said.

“On top of that, some of the clauses in the agreement were not acceptable. The price that they wanted to charge was too high, so the government decided to use that money to build a power plant instead,” he said.

Mr Siphan said the need for energy was not so urgent anymore because Cambodia has already received some energy from Vietnam, Laos and Thailand and because it had started to rain in the last few weeks.

During the cabinet meeting on Friday, Prime Minister Hun Sen approved plans by SPHP (Cambodia) to invest in a new hydroelectric dam in Pursat province’s Pursat river, as well as plans by Schnei Tech to build solar farms in Kampong Chhnang and Pursat.

The dam in Pursat will be able to produce 80 MW and will be built on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis with a total investment capital of more than $231 million. The company has been granted a 39-year concession for the project.