Greece's Public Power fails to attract bids in coal plants sale (updated)

Elvalhalcor Hellenic Copper and Aluminium Industry SA

15/07/2019 12:18

(Adds background, govt official comment)
    ATHENS, July 15 (Reuters) - Greece's electricity utility PPC
 DEHr.AT  on Monday failed to attract any binding bids for three
coal-fired plants it is selling as part of reforms Athens has
agreed with its lenders to help open up its electricity market.
    Public Power Corp. (PPC), which is 51 percent owned by the
state, rejected the two bids for the plants submitted in a
previous tender this year, saying they were not satisfactory.
 urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nA8N1T002F
    It relaunched the sale and received six expressions of
interest from Beijing Guohua and Damco Energy, China Western
Power Industrial  002630.SZ , Sev.En Energy and Indoverse Coal
Investments, GEK Terna  HRMr.AT , ElvalChalkor  ELHA.AT  and
Mytilineos  MYTr.AT .
    The latest deadline for the submission of binding bids
expired on Monday.
    PPC said it had received no bids by 12 noon (0900 GMT) on
Monday, when the deadline expired, and it now planned to call
the tender inconclusive.
    PPC is selling two plants in Megalopoli on the southern
Peloponnese along with another plant and a licence to build a
new one in Meliti, northern Greece, after a European Union court
ruled the utility had abused its dominant position in the coal
market.
    An official from the new conservative government, which took
power last week after a landslide victory in July 7 snap
election, said Greece would not seek to relaunch the sale for
these specific plants.
    An energy ministry official told Reuters on condition of
anonymity that the government would outline the main directions
of its action plan for PPC "in the coming days."
    With about a 70 percent share in the domestic retail market,
PPC has struggled to shore up its finances, saddled with more
than 2.4 billion euros of arrears from bills left unpaid during
the country's debt crisis, which began in late 2009.
    The new government has said it will work on a plan to help
PPC, which the new energy minister has said was "on the verge of
collapse".  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL8N2480IA
    Greek weekly Real News reported on Sunday that this plan
could include selling two hydroelectric plants along with the
coal-fired plants which failed to attract any bids, cutting the
workforce and the possible sale of profitable activities, 
    The energy ministry official said any plan to turn PPC
around would come after consultations between the government and
relevant parties.

 (Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou
Editing by Edmund Blair)
 ((angeliki.koutantou@thomsonreuters.com; +30 210 3376436;
Reuters Messaging: angeliki.koutantou.reuters.com@reuters.net))