Taqa to invest up to $1 bln in Indian power plants

By Stanley Carvalho

ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi National Energy Co. (Taqa) said on Wednesday it would invest up to $1 billion in a joint venture to build power plants in India, where electricity demand outstrips supply by as much as 10 percent.
United Arab Emirates-based Taqa's venture with India's Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. will add a total of up to 7,000 megawatts to generating capacity in Asia's third-largest economy, Taqa Chief Executive Peter Barker-Homek told Reuters.
The power plants will be built in the next three to five years across India, where the government plans to invest 8 trillion rupees ($283 billion) by 2012 to add about 100,000 megawatts of power generating capacity.
"There will be up to $1 billion in equity from Taqa, and Infrastructure Leasing will invest alongside," Barker-Homek said in an interview in Abu Dhabi, the largest of seven emirates in the oil-exporting UAE federation.
"We will identify power-deficient states to build independent power plants in the coming months."
Less than half of India's 138.27 million rural homes have power. With economic growth surging, electricity demand in the country of 1 billion people exceeds supply by 10 percent during peak hours.
Infrastructure Leasing said in a joint statement that investments with state-controlled Taqa would include a 750 megawatt gas-based power project in Tripura.
India was one of the countries Taqa cited when it announced in October it was planning to make energy acquisitions worth up to $3.5 billion in the next two years.
Taqa, which has controlling stakes in five power and water stations in Abu Dhabi, said on Tuesday it would buy Dutch gas exploration and production assets of BP for $694 million.
Gulf Arab companies are scouring the globe for investment opportunities after a tripling of oil prices since 2001 powered economic growth in the world's top oil-exporting region.

© Reuters