Saudi Electricity Company (SEC), which is in partnership with national oil giant Saudi Aramco, had awarded a contract to French utility company Engie to build a 1,504MW Fadhili power plant at a cost of $1.2b, reported Reuters.

The facility will be operational by December 2019 and financing will be raised through the partners and other external sources. Saudi Electricity (SEC) owns 20% of the project, with 30% belonging to Aramco, and the remaining  40% stake to private sector partners, who were not named, according AME Info.

SEC is a Saudi electric utility company that enjoys a monopoly on the generation, transmission and distribution of electric power in the kingdom through 45 power generation plants throughout the country.

In related Saudi power news, Egypt Oil&Gas previously wrote that SEC had signed memorandums of understanding (MoU) with different Chinese and Japanese Firms that showed investment interest in the kingdom’s renewable energy projects. SEC official meet with representatives of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and signed agreements with Power China, Mitsubishi Corporation, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), and JGC Corporation.