E-Power to spend £157 mm on gas turbine for Dublin plant

E-Power said it was spending £ 157.5 mm on a gas turbine for its Dublin electricity generation plant despite missing out on an allocation of gas recently. The private power company owned by telecoms businessmen Denis O'Brien and Leslie Buckley added that its power plant will be in commercial operation by December 2002.
Coming on stream on that date would mean it would be just weeks after one promoted by ESB and Statoil and another by Viridian were completed. Also it was confirmed that Viridian is paying between £ 15 mm and £ 17 mm to buy CRH out of its power station project in north county Dublin.

Viridian is to continue to seek a partner to finance the £130 m project after taking over building materials group CRH's 49.9% stake. E-Power's Mr Buckley revealed that his company was confident it could compete in power generation even though it did not get an allocation of gas from regulator Tom Reeves.
The company was in talks with Bord Gais and Enterprise Oil, which is part of the consortium involved in the Corrib field off Mayo, on supplying gas. He added that E-Power had written to complain to the regulator over the failure to be allocated gas and added that it was awaiting a response before deciding on whether or not to take legal action. E-Power said it would pay a consortium made up of General Electric and the Austrian builder of power plants VA Technologies euro 200 mm (£ 157.5 mm) to build a 400 MW gas turbine power station at Powerstown, near Mullhuddart.