Norway’s Saga in $2.9 billion deal to build solar power plants in Iran
Saga’s preliminary agreement with Iran’s state-owned Amin Energy Developers was the latest in a flurry of deals by foreign companies since the easing of international sanctions on the country in 2016 after it agreed to limits on its disputed nuclear programme.
OSLO: Norway’s Saga Energy has signed a 2.5 billion-euro ($2.94 billion) deal to build solar power plants in Iran, the company said on Tuesday, just days after U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled a more confrontational policy toward Teheran.
Saga’s preliminary agreement with Iran’s state-owned Amin Energy Developers was the latest in a flurry of deals by foreign companies since the easing of international sanctions on the country in 2016 after it agreed to limits on its disputed nuclear programme.
The deal, which still depends on finalising economic guarantees from Tehran, would see the construction over a four- to five-year period of 2 gigawatts of power generation capacity, Saga Energy spokesman Rune Haaland said.
The company will rely on banks, pension funds and Norwegian state export guarantees to fund the plan, and aims to recoup its investment through a 25-year deal on electricity prices, he added.
While Saga and Lithuania’s SoliTek will produce the solar panels, much of the remaining equipment will come from Taiwan’s Delta Electronics Inc.
“They will provide all the installations of electronics such as inverters, for example,” Haaland said of Delta.
Eventually, the plan is to build a plant in Iran to churn out solar panels, he added.
On Friday, Trump announced that he would decertify the 2015 nuclear agreement reached under his predecessor, Barack Obama, leaving its fate to the U.S. Congress which might try to modify it or bring back sanctions previously imposed on Iran.
“We are a little bit worried about what Trump is doing, we are very much in favour of the atomic deal, but we will of course continue with our plans whatever Trump does, no doubt about that, nothing can change that,” Saga’s Haaland said. ($1 = 0.8498 euro)
Source: Reuters
