KUCHING, July 6 — An open international tender will be put up early next year for the laying of submarine cables to ship electricity generated by Sarawak’s Bakun hydroelectric dam to Peninsula Malaysia. Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister Datuk Peter Chin Fah Kui said the international bidding to lay 675km undersea cable from Pueh in Lundu, near here, to Tanjung Leman in Mersing, Johor, would be called because the task needs  high level expertise.

He added that the tender, worth about RM8 billion to RM10 billion, could be awarded to the successful bidder by the middle of next year.



----

The purpose for the dam was to meet growing demand for electricity. However, most of this demand said to lie in Peninsular Malaysia and not East Malaysia, where the dam is located. Even in Peninsular Malaysia, however, there is an over-supply of electricity, with Tenaga Nasional Berhad being locked into unfavourable purchasing agreements with Independent Power Producers.

The original idea was to have 30% of the generated capacity consumed in East Malaysia and the rest sent to Peninsular Malaysia. This plan envisioned 730 km of overhead HVDC transmission lines in East Malaysia, 670 km of undersea HVDC cable and 300 km of HVDC transmission line in Peninsular Malaysia.

Usage of the generated capacity was to have been by a proposed aluminium smelting plant in Similajau, near Bintulu, approximately 180 km inland from the dam. The project is a joint venture between Dubai Aluminum Co, Ltd (Dubal) and Gulf International Investment Group (GIIG), an investment fund jointly set up by Malaysian tycoon Syed Mokhtar, and Dubai-based international financier Mohamed Ali Alabbar. This plant was expected to consume 50% of the power generated.

The amount of money spent could be used for more power per ringgit projects elsewhere.

Nuclear power? Obviously this won't be a solution in a few decades.

Sabah and Sarawak are facing a shortage of power,

Comalco never built the power station. With the company complaining that it could not afford to build the power plant, the government agreed in 1963 to build the Manapouri plant itself and to sell electricity from the station to Comalco at bargain- basement prices that have still not been officially revealed. The original Comalco rate was 13 times less than the rate paid by New Zealand householders and one twentieth the rate charged to other industries and farmers. The government even granted the company the right to take electricity from the national grid at Manapouri prices; Comalco exercised this right in 1974, when a drought caused a severe drop in Lake Manapouri's level.

Comalco has not given up its aspirations to retain access to Manapouri power at discount rates. Now it is employing the tried-and-true multinational strategem of pitting regions and countries against each other.

In March 1992, the Comalco board of directors met at Tiwai for the first time since 1984, told the anxious local media that it could only afford to upgrade one smelter at a time and announced that it would make its decision on which smelter to upgrade within the next six months. Chief Executive Nick Stump suggested several possible options: construction of the fourth Tiwai potline (with extra power needed from Electricorp); privatization of the Gladstone power station and expansion of the Boyne Island smelter in Queensland, Australia, or replacement of the Bell Bay potlines in Tasmania. "They are all [NZ]$500 million plus projects. The question is who is going to be first cab off the rank," Stump said. And he introduced a wild card - a pre-feasibility study on a new smelter in Chile.

Invercargill, the major city closest to Tiwai, has benefited handsomely from Comalco money and smelter jobs. The local National MP urged Bolger to step in to assure that the smelter expansion would take place in Bluff, and not in Chile or elsewhere.