ICBC provides loan for 600 MW Ayas Supercritical Coal-Fired Power Plant Project

In 2009, ICBC and AYAS Enerji (AYAS Enerji Üretim ve Ticaret A.S.) — a special purpose vehicle and wholly-owned subsidiary of the Turkish armed forces pension fund (OYAK)— signed a loan agreement for the 600 MW Ayas Supercritical Coal-Fired Power Plant Project. The proceeds of this loan were to be used to finance an EPC contract between China National Machinery and Equipment Import & Export Corporation (CMEC) and Germany’s Evonik Steag Gmb Corporation, which was signed on August 19, 2009. The face value of the loan is unknown. This $750 million project involves the construction of a 600MW supercritical coal-fired power plant near Sugözü village in Yumurtalık district and Adana province. In April 2009, the project received a license for an 800 MW plant from the Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EPDK or EMRA). Site preparation work was reported as completed, and conducted by EKTON Construction & Logistics. Then, on September 1, 2009, the project began implementation. However, it encountered implementation difficulties. In March 2015, Ayas Enerji held an environmental permitting public hearing in Sugözü. Activists and community members with Adana Environmental Platform protested at the meeting. The project's license was challenged due to a high concentration of proposed plants in the area. According to EMRA, the plant was under construction and 19% complete as of January 2019. Satellite photography from plant shows only ground-clearing activity at the project site between January 2019 and June 2019.

Additional details

1. The Chinese project title is（AYAS）1×600MW超临界电站项目 or 土耳其Ayas电站. 2. In 2009, OYAK, the Turkish armed forces pension fund, bought a 49% stake in AYAS Enerji. It later bought an additional 51% of the company to make it a wholly-owned subsidiary. OYAK subsequently sold 50% of the company to AES Entek, which OYAK described as a "joint venture of the Koç Group and AES." 3. The face value of the ICBC loan is unknown. For the time being, AidData assumes that the $750 million project is being financed according to a debt-to-equity ratio of 70:30. This issue warrants further investigation.

Number of official sources

7

Number of total sources

16