ACWA Power has completed the acquisition of certain shares and debt instruments/ loan notes from Marubeni in Rabigh Arabian Water & Electricity Company (RAWEC) and certain shares owned by Marubeni in RAWEC’s Operations & Maintenance Company Rabigh Power Company (RPC).
Image: ACWA Power acquires additional shares in RAWEC to consolidate its stake. Photo: Courtesy of Acwa Power.
RAWEC is a captive utilities provider for Rabigh Refining and Petrochemical Company, a joint venture formed in 2005 between Sumitomo Chemical, Japan and Saudi Aramco, KSA.
The joint venture company owns, operates and manages the Rabigh petrochemical complex consisting of integrated oil refining and petrochemical operations that produces a variety of refined petroleum and petrochemical products at Rabigh in KSA.
RAWEC owns and operates a 840MW conventional thermal power plant and desalination facility capable of producing 6,110 t/h steam and 12,000 t/h water. The facility is situated approximately 160km North of Jeddah, located within the Rabigh Complex.
ACWA Power president & chief executive officer Paddy Padmanathan said: “The purchase of additional shares in RAWEC and RPC to increase our existing majority ownership demonstrates our confidence in this utility complex and our desire to further strengthen the partnership with our key client Petro Rabigh Corporation.”
Uunder a long term take or pay Water and Energy Conversion Agreement (WECA), the RAWEC plant supplies the utilities to Petro Rabigh Corporation.
The plant comprises of two phases which were commissioned in 2008 and 2016 respectively, but runs as an integrated operation and is also synchronized to the SEC electricity grid providing a non-stop and highly reliable utilities supply to Petro Rabigh Corporation.
The company said that the RPC is responsible for the operations & maintenance of the RAWEC plant under a long term operations & maintenance agreement with RAWEC.
ACWA Power chief investment officer Rajit Nanda said: “By acquiring Marubeni’s Shares in RAWEC and RPC we intend to build upon our recent successes in the power generation and water desalination sector in the kingdom and the rest of the world and consolidate our position as a major power and water utilities provider to credit worthy energy intensive industrial customers like Petro Rabigh Corporation.”