Beirut 29 October 2018: The US based company PrimeSouth, is celebrating the completion of the rehabilitation activities at Deir Ammar Combined Cycle Power plant in Northern Lebanon.
PrimeSouth has won the bid for a 5 year operation and maintenance contract in February 2016. The maintenance scope of the contract includes updating the production units and accompanying facilities located within the Deir Ammar power plant.
In this occasion, an inaugural event was held today (29th of October) on Deir Ammar premises in presence of His Excellency Cezar Abi Khalil, Minister of Energy, Her Excellency Elizabeth Richard, US Ambassador to Lebanon, General Manager of EDL, Kamal Hayek in addition to the CEO of PrimeSouth Khaled El Alami and Global Director of Operations of the company Mr. John Dismone.
The completion of works at Deir Ammar represents a qualitative milestone for EDL , enabling it to increase efficiency at the plant and raise its production from 450 MW to 470 MWs approximately. PrimeSouth succeeded to bring back the plant to a robust level. Primesouth has still to complete similar works at the Zahrani plant.
To execute Deir Ammar works, PrimeSouth cooperated with the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) active in the global power market.
Minister Abi Khalil noted: “We are happy to have worked with a distinguished American contractor to see this landmark rehabilitation project take shape. This is the biggest single contract we have ever sealed with an American company. The project increases the efficiency of the Deir Ammar power plant and its lifetime while reducing the cost of fuel being consumed. We are pleased that PrimeSouth has cooperated with local subcontractors and qualified Lebanese employees to achieve the project. We hope that this initiative will encourage other contractors to work on the Ministry’s upcoming plants in other regions of Lebanon.”
Mr. Kamal Hayek said:” PrimeSouth has been operating our two power plants at Deir Ammar since February 2016, and we have a positive good evaluation of Primesouth overall performance. The full rehabilitation of the plant is crucial to restore the availability and reliability of production units after 20 years of operations. I should stress that PrimeSouth has been always assisting in resolving all problems and defects and showed high flexibility to provide maintenance assistance regardless of contractual details. We hope that this positive cooperation will extend to the remaining period of the contract.”
Mr. Dismone declared: “As an American company, we have seen many positive opportunities here in Lebanon. We have witnessed many important and interesting factors in our work at Deir Ammar. We have grown our operations here and we plan to develop them even further. It was great to cooperate with EDL and its leadership, and we are ready to go the extra mile with such a distinguished team in the field.”
From her side, US Ambassador, Elizabeth Richard pointed that: “In just over two years (…) PrimeSouth-operated plants now generate virtually half the electricity in Lebanon (…) International experts, including the World Bank, have identified not only power generation shortfalls, but chronic underinvestment in the grid – the towers and transmission lines that move electricity to the customers. This results in unsustainable losses. American companies will see these areas as investment opportunities, and American technologies can deliver, just as PrimeSouth has done over the past two years. The previous government recognized that infrastructure across Lebanon needs both significant reform and significant investment.”