MALAYSIA'S TENAGA EYES EARNING BOOST FROM POWER EXPORT TO THAILAND

Jan 18, 2007 Asia Pulse Data Source

Tenaga Nasional Bhd (KLSE:5347) expects earnings from electricity export to Thailand to double to RM1 billion (US$285.2 million) if the current negotiations bear fruit.

Tenaga, which now received RM500 million for 300 megawatts (MW) of power supply to Thailand, is negotiating with the Thai authorities to export an additional 300MW.

Tenaga chief executive, Che Khalib Mohamad Noh, said meetings had been going on and the response was quite positive.

He was speaking to reporters after attending a ceremony to mark Connaught Bridge power station's 200,000 operating hours on Siemens gas turbines.

Asked when the negotiations would be completed, Che Khalib said: "first we have to get the agreement from Thailand to accept. We have not got that yet."

"Our technical team is working on the matter and hopefully the negotiations will be completed within this year," he said.

North China's Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, southwestern Yunnan Province and Shandong Province were the top three provinces whose installed capacity rose by over 30 percent in 2006.

The manufacturing sector remains the top power consumer of the country, with its total power consumption rising 14.3 percent to 2,135.4 billion kw-hour in 2006.

The heavy industry consumed 1,702.1 billion kw-hour with a year-on-year growth of 15.4 percent. The growth is 0.14 percent lower than in 2005.

Power consumption of the light industry rose by 11.9 percent to 413.3 billion kw-hour. The growth is 1.87 percent higher than a year ago.

The service sector consumed 282.2 billion kw-hour, up 11.8 percent from 2005, while power consumption by households rose by 14.7 percent to 324 billion kw-hour.

China's GDP growth continued to grow at around 10 percent in 2006. The government has been striving to turn the investment- and trade-driven economy to a more sustainable model that would be less greedy for energy.

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