Sarawak Hidro Sdn Bhd is in advanced talks with Sarawak Energy Bhd (SEB) to sell the power from the Bakun dam to the state utility firm.
Sarawak Hidro managing director Zulkifle Osman said negotiations would resume around Jan 20, and hopefully, an agreement on the sale and purchase of Bakun power could be inked in May or July by the latest.
The last round of talks was in October last year before the impoundment of the dam, which will generate up to 2,400MW when fully operational.
“SEB has done its due diligence on various aspects, including the technical and financial aspects of the Bakun dam, and is now doing some fine-tuning (on the findings). We have yet to see the report,” he told StarBiz.
He said the negotiations had yet to touch on tariffs for power from the Bakun dam.
Despite preparations for the sale of the Bakun dam project to the Sarawak government, the talks to hammer out the power tariffs will be ongoing. The value of a power-generation project is often determined by the level of its tariffs
In September, Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud said in Kuching that the state government had placed a bid of over RM6bil to buy over the Bakun project from the federal government.
Taib had said recently that the state government was willing to raise its bid for the dam ownership to RM7bil, from an initial RM6bil, if the federal government could offer flexi-payment mode, like providing a lower bridging loan.
The federal government agreed to sell the dam to the Sarawak government three months ago.
However, Zulkifle said he did not know of the progress of negotiations between the two governments.
Sarawak Hidro, which is owned by the Finance Ministry, is the developer of the dam, which costs more than RM7bil to build.
Zulkifle said with good rainfalls in the interiors (which is at the maximium level based on the average taken in the past 10 years), the water level at the reservoir had risen to 158m since the impoundment started less than three months ago.
He said wet testing on the first turbine, which could produce 300MW, was expected to be carried out in April when the water level reaches between 185m and 190m.
To achieve that level, he said, a good pattern of rainfall should continue as the water level would be rising at a slower pace from now on due to the larger surface area that it needs to cover.
The area to be flooded covers 690 sq km, which is about the size of Singapore. Earlier predictions had put the entire flooding process at up to two years.
Zulkifle said Sarawak Hidro, which was reported to have assembled some 150 ecological experts worldwide to monitor the massive flooding exercise, had not encountered any technical problems.
“Wet testing will take at least one month, with pre-commissioning (of the first of the eight turbines) in May. The dam will be operational (to produce power) by July,” he added.
Zulkifle said Bakun power would be supplied to energy-intensive industries like aluminium smelters and steel mills to be set up in the Samalaju Industrial Park in Bintulu Division within the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy.
The basic infrastructure of the park is now under development.
Zulkifle said he hoped the SEB power substation in Similajau would be ready by July. A joint-venture company between China’s Sinohydro Corp and Naim Holdings Bhd is building the RM209mil Bakun-Similajau transmission system.
