By Libya Herald reporters.
Tunis, 21 October 2017:
Presidency Council (PC) head Faiez Serraj inspected Obari’s new Turkish-built 640MW power station today after the fourth and last of its turbine had completed its commissioning tests.
State power company GECOL reported that the last of the 160MW Simple Cycle gas turbines had been run up successfully. The Obari station has been built by Turkey’s ENKA Teknik on a turn-key basis.
Work originally began in 2010 and the project was 90 percent complete when the Turkish company pulled out its engineers in 2013, after local fighting between Tebu and Tuaregs.
This January, ENKA was persuaded to return after the PC agreed to its demand that regular commercial flights began from Obari to Tripoli and the town’s hospital was improved.
The power plant draws it gas from the Sharara field and is expected to soon be fully on line and supplying the GECOL’s western grid.
Besides visiting the new station and greeting workers and engineers, Serraj and a large ministerial team accompanying him also went to Obari hospital, the Women’s Centre, the public market and three schools, all of which are being supported by the UNDP-administered Libya Stabilization Facility.
The facility paid for the renovation of several medical rooms and an MRI scanner is still to be delivered to the hospital, the only fully functioning public hospital in the region.
Serraj was accompanied to Obari by deputy PC head Ahmed Hamza, the PC’s local government minister Bidad Gansou, health minister Omar Bashir, foreign minister Mohamed Siala, labour minister Mahdi Warathmi, social affairs minister Fadi Mansour and the deputy ministers of education, defence and transport.
There were also meetings with senior local officials, sheikhs and civil society institutions.
