Chinese want BPC out of Morupule B
Lawrence Seretse | Friday March 28, 2014 15:56
The Chinese contractor at Morupule B Power Plant contemplates a new arrangement to propose to the Botswana Power Corporation (BPC), to see to it that the two parties have working distance in their operations.
“I hold it that if we were to pay back BPC their P11 billion and then we were to build this thing without them disturbing us, it would be more ideal,” said a Chinese engineer who preferred anonymity.
The Chinese engineer at China National Electric Equipment Corporation (CNEEC) has said that he felt this arrangement would be favourable to them if BPC were to agree with it. He said that this power crisis has affected their reputation and has set the company back by P900 million on repairing the defects.
CNEEC said that BPC with its lack of expertise and management dealing with contractors involved has considerably led to delays and the acute power shortages frequently experienced nationally.
The CNEEC senior engineer is of the opinion that BPC should have completely shied away from active participation in the project.
He said that if it were up to him, CNEEC would have been left alone to handle the construction of the plant and hand it over when complete and tested.
“BPC has failed to handle things professionally here. It has brought more friction in this working environment than anything else,” he said. Responding to the idea offered by the CNEEC senior engineer, BPC CEO Jacob Raleru laughed it off as mere wishful thinking. Raleru said that they could not breach the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract that was currently in place.
Is the prevailing situation between CNEEC and BPC a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth?
Raleru refused to finger any player yet, citing that he would rely on the root cause analysis to point out individuals and bring them to account.
For the past two years numerous companies have been roped in to bring expertise and solutions to the problems at Morupule B power plant. When the project started, BPC roped in Fichtner Engineering as their expert eyes on the ground.
Fichtner’s role, the epitome task being to supervise, monitored CNEEC to make sure that by any means the power plant is delivered to BPC well in time. In 2013, an American technical advisor, Messrs Aurecon AME was employed along with legal advisors, Norton Rose from England. BPC could not provide Mmegi with the findings from Aurecon’s task force and whether they were detrimental to the completion of Morupule B.
The World Bank as one of the biggest funders of the project along side the African Development Bank and the International Chinese Banking Corporation (ICBC) all had vested interests and therefore their eyes on the progression of Morupule B since day one.
At some point the World Bank flew in some experts of its own to inspect and give technical advice. That was before the previous Project Manager, Glenn Black skipped the country at the height of the boiler defects’ arguments.
Although billions of Pula and so many specialised players have been involved in this project. It still beats logic how such a ‘billion Pula defect’ managed to slip through everyone’s watch.
Even with the boiler designer on site, how did they still get it wrong? The Morupule B Power Plant boilers were manufactured by Wuxi Huaguang Boiler Company (WHBC) and were developed using technology and designs licenced from international organisations, Mmegi has established. The Andritz Energy and Environment (AE&E) Lentjies designed the boilers while the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) set the standards.
AE&E, a German company, was also in charge of the basic design of boilers while WHBC undertook detailed design and fabrication. State media also reported this in November 2009.
During manufacturing there were full time WHBC inspectors at the plant and a third party company engaged by CNEEC.
CNEEC subcontracted WHBC for the supply of boilers in June 2009 and all the four units. However, what beats the odds is how such a defect came to escape the watchful inspection and supervision by such world-renowned engineers? It had been reported that WHBC introduced 200-300MW boiler technology with Foster Wheeler from the USA and further, with AE&E introduced dry process flue gas cleaning technology.
Other companies that WHBC have collaborated with include IHI, CMI and Shell.
Besides importing technology in boiler manufacturing, the company has also imported its manufacturing equipment from countries such as Italy, Sweden, USA, Germany, France and Japan, the state media had reported.
The plate rolling equipment, for instance was bought from Italy while the bending machine came from Germany, the report stated.
WHBC has thus become an international company as it has now extended its market to 10 nations, with a boiler similar to Morupule B sold to Mongolia in 2005.
In the report the state media quoted the WHBC chairman, Wang Fujun, saying that their (WBHC) overseas market represented a 20 percent of their total boiler market, adding that the four 150MW units shipped to Botswana were the biggest by volume while the biggest single unit ever exported was 800MW to India.