Austria's Alpine Bau Withdraws from Bulgaria's Gorna Arda Hydro Power Project

SOFIA (Bulgaria), May 17 (SeeNews) – Austria's Alpine Bau has withdrawn from its tie-in with Austrian power utility EVN for the construction of the Gorna Arda cascade of hydropower plants in Bulgaria, EVN said.

"EVN remains the single partner to [Bulgaria's power grid operator] NEK in the Gorna Arda project. The other potential stakeholder has withdrawn from its role. As a result, Alpine Bau is transferring all its rights and obligations in the project to EVN," EVN said in a statement released on Sunday.

EVN said that the change in the shareholding structure would not delay the implementation of the project.

The deal for the long-delayed project between state-owned Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH) with the Austrian tie-in, in which the consortium would invest 600 million euro ($739.5 million), was signed last May.

The Austrian consortium replaced Turkey's Construction Contracting Group (CCG) after buying CCG's 30.1% stake in the project. The remaining stake is held by BEH.

CCG was the successor to Turkey's Ceylan Holding in the project.

In 1999 NEK, now part of BEH, and Ceylan Holding formed a 69.91/30.1 joint venture to build the 175-megawatt cascade of three hydropower plants on the Gorna Arda river, in southern Bulgaria near the border with Turkey. The project was due to kick off in the autumn of 1999 but construction works never began as the bank that was to finance the Turkish part of the deal filed for insolvency.

($= 0.8114 euro)

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