Chollet dam saga rumbles on...3 May 2024 22:33
Today's depeches reports that this project - a potential 600 Mw dam on the Congo-Cameroon border, is being re-opened to tender on a BOT (37 year tenure) basis.
For reference, C-B's current main power supply ex ENI is about 500Mw.
(1 )French TPF Group exited the Chollet project because of a lack of clarity re funding. The Chollet project has been encountering obstacles for at least five years. According to a joint statement of the energy ministries in Cameroon and Congo made public in September 2021, the Congolese side has been struggling to mobilize the funds it needs to carry out the project since 2017.
(2) Shortly thereafter, under a BOT (Build Operate Transfer) contract, China Gezhouba said it would build a 108m high dam, forming an 85m waterfall on the Dja River (also known as the Ngoko River), which flows through Cameroon and Congo before joining the Sangha River, itself a tributary of the Congo River. The project requires an investment of an estimated $700 million...
(3) Now the project is (again) being put out to re-tender, suggesting that China Gezhouba hasn't progressed matters.
(4) Interesting because this is the same China Gezhouba that was also separately awarded two other dam contracts in C-B in 2022, involving Paul Obambi (Sapro Mayoko) and his Energaz subsidiary, see
https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/chinas-gezhouba-group-will-build-two-dams-totalling-331-mw-congo.html
25 MAY 2022
"The Congolese government has signed an agreement with a consortium of Energaz, a local company, and the Chinese state-owned construction and engineering corporation Gezhouba Group (CGGC), to build the 230 MW Morala and 101 MW Nyanga hydropower projects in the south of the country, with a combined capacity of 331 MW. In addition, the two companies will rehabilitate* a 19 MW Liouesso hydropower plant, commissioned in 2017. Hydropower accounts for 28% of Congo's installed capacity with 214 MW (2020). "
Lots of photos of Obambi shaking hands with Little Den at the time.
*The 19.9-MW Liouesso hydroelectric plant on the Sangha river was constructed by the China Gezhouba Group itself, at a cost of about US$110 million.
So Gezhouba won a contract to rehabilitate a dam that it had commissioned 5 years earlier. Two years on there's no news on progress re the other two dams, at Morala and Nyanga.
Perhaps fortunately, ZIOC's hydropower requirements are being looked at by China Machine Engineering Corp CMEC.
Ho hum.