In 2018, the General Electricity Company contracted with a Greek company to build a power plant in the city of Tobruk with a production capacity of 780 megawatts. The project consists of four gas turbines with a total installed capacity of 780 megawatts, while the total value of the contract, which included civil works, installation, and commissioning, was approximately 400 million US dollars.
Today, the plant is complete, and all four turbines have been installed. However, two essential elements were overlooked during the project’s planning phase.
First, the General Electricity Company did not provide the required additional funding, amounting to 50 million US dollars, to complete the project by increasing fuel tank capacity, completing the GIS substation, and constructing the plant’s protective building, in addition to the administration building and control room. Consequently, the current fuel storage capacity is only sufficient to operate two out of the four installed turbines, meaning that half of the plant’s production capacity cannot be utilized.
Second, the company did not complete the implementation of the 400 kV transmission line extending from Tobruk to the Al-Marawah substation, and then to Sidi Hamri to connect it to the national electricity grid. As a result, the current transmission network cannot accommodate more than 200 megawatts, despite the plant’s installed capacity being 780 megawatts. Accordingly, the plant is currently operating at no more than 25% of its production capacity, while the remaining capacity remains idle.
What is even more surprising is that the cost to complete the transmission line is estimated at no more than 40 million US dollars. With the proper implementation of this line, the power transmission capacity would increase to approximately 1 gigawatt, which is sufficient not only to transmit the entire output of the Tobruk plant but also to provide additional capacity to accommodate any future expansions in electricity production.
In other words, an additional investment ranging between 90 and 100 million US dollars would have enabled the country to fully utilize the 780 megawatts of installed production capacity, while also providing additional absorption capacity for the future.
This case is a clear example of how poor planning and poor project management can undermine a massive infrastructure investment. At a time when Libya is suffering from a severe deficit in electricity production and frequent power outages, we find a new power plant operating at only a quarter of its capacity, due to the failure to complete the basic infrastructure necessary to operate it at full capacity.
The result is that, by failing to invest an additional approximately 25% of the project’s cost, the country today benefits from only 25% of the actual value of an investment that cost 400 million US dollars.
Can what happened be described as merely poor planning and poor management? Or does it reflect a deeper flaw in the way major infrastructure projects are planned, coordinated, and implemented?