The PIM is expected to be a compendium of all financial, technical and other details on the project. Two-and-a-half months will be taken up to produce this report.

The report, it is believed, will include among its details of financial requirements, all the implications of the sanctions the United States has imposed on India, which may block off some vital American institutional guarantees for the loans to be raised by DPC. Major guarantors for the project's first phase, for which financial closure has been sealed, were US Exim and Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), two US government-owned institutions.

Once the memorandum is complete, it will be circulated to all prospective lenders. According to Dabhol Power sources, in the post-sanctionscontext, the list of recipients would include a large number of non-American lenders who would not necessarily have otherwise participated in financing the project.

When asked whether the project was off its official schedule of implementation as a result of the sanctions, the Dabhol Power source said that while the company was anticipating a delay of around two months in financial closure, there was no actual delay yet.

For the next two-and-a-half months, therefore, the Dabhol Power Project phase-II will basically be in a state of preparation. Apart from Enron, the two other American equity holders in Dabhol Power are the leading engineering companies GE and Bechtel.

Recently, in course of a whirlwind visit to Maharashtra, Enron's chief executive Rebecca Mark had told journalists that the financial closure of the project's second phase would probably be delayed by two months.

A statement to this effect was also made by the union power minister R Kumaramangalam on Saturday.

Dabhol has been one ofthe quickest cases of implementation of power projects in India so far, with work on its phase I well under way, despite a controversial early phase when politics had intervened to halt progress, and the situation had to be resolved in negotiations with the Maharashtra's political leadership.

It is believed that certain other funding issues also have to be worked out in course of drawing up detailed plans for the power project. The most important of these issues, it is believed, is fuel supply and pricing of the fuel for the project.

Independent-power producers have been pushed on the backfoot by the sudden nuclear fallout. They will not have access to the strong guarantees from the American institutions, and they will also have to bear the risk premium being imposed by international lenders on Indian borrowers. To top it all, they are having to suffer a substantial exchange loss, and in many cases bridging the exchange gap is proving to be a problem (some of the power companies introduce "pass-through"clauses in their power-purchase agreements early on, but others have to approach institutions to help bridge the currency gap).