Dam developer to start access road construction
Dam developer to start access road construction
Lao and foreign joint venture energy developer Nam Ngiep 1 Power Co Ltd expects to start work on a road upgrade and new road construction in Borikhan district, Borikhamxay province, next month.
The road will be about 28km long and will be the access road to the construction site of the Nam Ngiep 1 hydropower project.
The 28km road will include improvements to a section of about 21.2km from Nonsomboun to Had-yeun villages, while the remaining 6km or 7km will be a new road, running from Had-yeun to the dam construction site, a company official said.
“We will have to com plete this project within the next year or before construction starts on the dam,” the official said.
Investment in the Nam Ngiep 1 project amounts to about 3.9 trillion kip (US$500 million) to 7.8 trillion kip (US$1 billion), including the cost of access road construction.
Nam Ngiep 1 Power Co Ltd plans to start work on the Nam Ngiep 1 hydropower project in Borikhamxay next year. Construction will take about five years and should be finished by January 2019.
The company signed a concession agreement with the Lao government in August.
The project is a reservoir-type hydropower plant with a total capacity of 290 megawatts (MW) that will generate about 1,550GWh of electricity per year.
It has been planned on a Build-Operate-Transfer basis by a private company, aiming to sell electricity to the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, which will receive 93 percent, while the remaining 7 percent will be sold to Electricite du Laos, for a period of 27 years.
Japan's Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. will be the largest shareholder, with 45 percent, while Thailand's EGAT International Co., Ltd. will hold 30 percent and the Lao Holding State Enterprise will hold 25 percent.
The dam site is 150km northeast of Vientiane and will use water from the Nam Ngiep River, a tributary of the Mekong.
vientiane times
