The companies/consortia selected through pre-qualification bidding are Raytheon, Black & Veatch, Duke-Flour Daniel-Tata, L&T and Sargent Lundy, Bechtel-Foster Wheeler-Mitsubishi Heavy Industry-Nichiman, ABB and Siemens.

"The selected companies/consortia are currently conducting site visits and we expect that a party for the EPC job would be selected within the next 10 weeks," a senior AES official told The Financial Express.

AES, in fact, had to speed up the process of selecting an EPC contractor as the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) insisted on the final price of the EPC job. AES had submitted a ceiling price when it had approached the CEA for techno-economic clearance for the project. However, after sitting over the file for overone-and-a-half years, the CEA told AES in March 1998 that the ceiling price is not acceptable to the authority and directed AES to furnish the final price after the competitive biddings.

The AES official said the pre-bid meeting would be held in the first week of June and by the end of July the bidding would be finalised. He said the CEA would scrutinise the EPC bidding and, if required, negotiate the price with the successful bidder before giving the clearance. CEA has cleared the 2x250 MW coal fired project as far as technical parameters are concerned.

Earlier, AES had selected a Raytheon-led consortium of GE, Foster Wheeler and L&T for the EPC job through a global competitive bidding in 1993.

The consortium was also paid some amount for preliminary work for the original 2x210 MW thermal project. AES had to renege on the contract as it went for a changed configuration of 2x250 MW instead of 2x210 MW.

Meanwhile, AES has initiated the process of acquiring the required 650 acre of land, including theash pond for the project. It will take over site V and site VI of state-owned Orissa Power Generation Corporation's Ib Valley project. OPGC has developed a total of 1,800 acre of land in the coal mine rich area of Ib Valley in Jharsuguda district to set up six units of thermal power stations.

The state generating company has already set up two units of 210 MW each at site I & site II and is in the process of setting up two more units of the same capacity in the adjacent site III and site IV.

The AES official said the company is likely to go in for financial closure by the end of December. Given the mood of the May 22-23 inter-ministerial meeting for the counter guarantee, the guarantee cover of the government of India is likely to come by the September, he said. According to him, the first unit of the project would be commissioned by January 2002, if the company was able to go in for financial closure as per schedule.