Qatar’s Nebras to buy Engie’s stake in Paiton

Qatar’s Nebras Power plans to acquire a 35.5 percent stake held by French utility Engie in Indonesia’s largest independent power producer PT Paiton Energy by the end of 2016, the CEO of Nebras said yesterday. The Qatari infrastructure investment firm, 60 percent owned by Qatar Electricity and Water, with the remainder split between Qatar Petroleum and Qatar Holding, said in February it planned to acquire the stake in PT Paiton. Engie currently has a 40.5 percent stake, with the remainder held by Japan’s Mitsui, Tokyo Electric Power, and Indonesia’s PT Batu Hitam, according to Engie’s website.

“The Paiton project we are in the process of closing now. We are targeting the end of this year,” Khalid Jolo told Reuters. Jolo declined to comment on the value of the stake but Nebras Power’s chairman, Fahad Al-Mohannadi, told state news agency QNA in October that it planned to invest $1.35 billion in Indonesia’s Paiton project for producing electricity. Qatar, the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas producer, founded Nebras in 2014 as a $1 billion investment arm to add foreign power and water assets to stakes it already had in businesses from Volkswagen to Harrods department store in London. — Reuters