Siemens has inaugurated a new gas turbine factory in Charlotte, North Carolina, with a view to expanding its worldwide network of gas turbine manufacturing facilities. The German company has invested more than $350 million in a 42,000 square metre plant in Charlotte, creating 700 new jobs.
"Charlotte is the only Siemens plant that produces gas and steam turbines, as well as generators,” a company representative said. The facility also plays a key role in Siemens’ profitable power plant service business.
Bernard Anne, managing director of Bureau Veritas' (BV) Marine Division has signalled out LNG as one of the shipping sectors where the indicators are good and positive. "I do not see any good markets except for gas markets and consequentially LNG tankers. There are simply too many ships around," Anne said at the annual BV Beaujolais Party in London on Thursday evening.
Alstom, the French engineering giant, did neither confirm nor deny a statement from the Iraqi energy ministry that it has won a $540m contract to construct a 182-MW gas-fired power plant in Iraq. "We are expecting to sign the contract with the Iraqi energy ministry any time soon", an Astom spokesman told Gas-to-Power Journal.
Minera Mexico, a unit of Grupo Mexico, has awarded a contract to Siemens Energy to supply of a 250 MW combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant. Siemens Energy is signing responsible for the full turnkey supply of the plant, named 'La Caridad II', which includes plant engineering, procurement and construction.
Siemens Energy told Gas-to-Power Journal that the main equipment to be installed at the plant includes an SGT6-5000F gas turbine, an SST-900 steam turbine, an SGEN6-1000A generator, a heat-recovery steam generator, and the complete electrical and SPPA-T3000 in-strumentation & control equipment.
E.ON said it plans to "systematically grow its power generation business" while Q3 results show that net debt stood at EUR34.5 billion at the end of September 2011. Russia remains an important focus of the German energy major.
In Germany, E.ON is planning to start operations of its Datteln-4 power plant in 2013 while the pilot project Irsching-4 is already fully operational, E.ON spokesman Dr. Sebastian Heindrichs, told Gas-to-Power Journal.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is providing $170 million in financing to support the construction of a new 1,600 megawatt (MW) natural gas-fired power plant in Thailand. Commercial operation of the plant, located in the Nong Saeng district north of Bangkok, is slated to start by 2014.
