Dabhol Power Company

The Dabhol Power Company was a company based in India, formed to manage and operate the Dabhol Power Plant. The Dabhol plant was built through the combined effort of Enron, GE, and Bechtel. GE provided the generating turbines to Dabhol, Bechtel constructed the physical plant, and Enron was charged with managing the project through Enron International.

The infrastructure

Starting in the mid-1990s, Unocal and its partners planned to build a 1,000 mile gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Multan, in Pakistan. Cost: about $2 billion. Also considered was a more difficult route from Iran to Multan. A proposed 400-mile extension from Multan to New Delhi would bring some of the ultra-cheap gas into India's network of gas pipelines. Cost: $600 million.

The HBJ pipeline carries most of India's liquid natural gas. Hazira, north of Mumbai, is the end of the HBJ pipeline. But in 1997, Enron announced plans to link Dabhol to the Hazira terminal. Enron also said they were going to add to about 1500 miles to the HBJ pipeline. Costs: $300 million and $900 million, respectively.

Any gas pipeline across Pakistan could have a spur to the seaport of Gwadar, where tankers could take gas to Korea and Japan, largest consumers of liquid gas in the world. A sea route from Gwadar to Dabhol would be even easier.

Dabhol Power Plant

The plant when finished would be an enormous $2.8 billion plant producing 2,184 megawatts of power. The power plant was built in two phases.

Phase One

Phase one was set to burn naphtha, a fuel similar to kerosene and gasoline. Phase one would produce 740 megawatts and help stabilize the local transmission grid. The power plant's phase one project was started in 1992 and finally completed in 1999 two years behind schedule.

Phase Two

Phase two would burn liquefied natural gas (LNG). The LNG infrastructure associated with the LNG Terminal at Dabhol was going to cost around $1 billion.

In 1996 when India's Congress Party was no longer in power Dabhol seemed to have disappeared. India refused to pay for the plant and stopped construction. From 1996 until Enron's bankruptcy in 2001 the company tried fruitlessly to revive the project and spark interest in India's need for the power plant.

Dabhol Today

The power plant Phase I which is re-christened Ratnagiri Gas and Power Pvt Ltd (RGPL) started operation in May 2006, after a hiatus of over 5 years. However, the Dabhol plant ran into further problems, with RGPL shutting down the plant on 4 July, 2006 due to a lack of naptha supply. Qatar based RasGas Company Ltd. will now supply LNG to the plant starting April 2007.

The Dabhol Power plant consists of 3 blocks, each consisting of two GE make frame 9 gas turbines and one GE steam turbine. Block 2 commissioning work and Gas turbine 2A trial runs started on 25 April, 2007.