Montserrat inviting to Early Market Engagement Meeting January 2015

Soufriere Hills Volcano, Montserrat (source: flickr/ David Stanley, creative commons)

Francisco Rojas 4 Dec 2014

DFID Early Market Engagement — Monserrat Geothermal Project – DFID is hosting an Early Market Engagement Event on this planned programme to:

1) Give suppliers an opportunity to ask DFID further questions on the programme and

2) Enable suppliers to meet other organisations who may be interested in collaborating on this programme.

The aim of the day is for DFID to gauge interest in the project, to engage with the market to gain expert opinion, explore possible approaches and increase DFID’s knowledge on how best to proceed with this programme. DFID is also keen to understand other regional initiatives in the geothermal market and to ensure information is shared and existing approaches understood with a view to maximising opportunities both for the market and for DFID.

The event will be held in the form of a 2 hour session on the 14th January 2015 in DFID’s London office at 22 Whitehall, SW1A 2EG and DFID Montserrat via video conference. Date due to be confirmed start of December. On the defined date the event will begin promptly at 13:30am GMT – 09:30 Montserrat, therefore attendees are asked to arrive to Whitehall before 13:15am GMT and The Governors Offices, Brades, Montserrat at 09:15.

The event will last approximately 2 hours, and suppliers are asked to use the Clarification function on the DFID Portal to confirm the name, contact number and email address of their one attendee to the event.

 DFID will first give a brief presentation on the programme and provide information on the procurement process, before opening up to questions from suppliers. There will be time available at the end of the event for networking. An attendance list will be circulated after the event. Parties interested in attending the event or requiring any further information should register interest via the DFID Supplier Portal (https://supplierportal.dfid.gov.uk/selfservice/).

This will be the main communication channel moving forward. DFID will issue further information to those suppliers who register an interest in attending prior to the event. We are happy to receive questions in advance of this event, which DFID will respond to at the event. The discussion headlines will also be published after the event on the Supplier Portal. We will not disclose the source of the questions.

If you are interested in attending this event, you must first register your interest on the supplier portal by: Monday 5th Jan 2015 at 12:00 am. GMT.

Only suppliers who pre-register in this way will have security clearance to attend the session Formal confirmation to all registered interests will be issued on Thursday 8th January. Contract Start Date: mid 2015; Contract End Date: 2016; Contract Duration (months): estimate 6-9 months.

However, only Registered Suppliers can access these documents. Details on Supplier Portal and guidance to register can be found in: https://supplierportal.dfid.gov.uk/selfservice/.

Project Description:

Geothermal Energy Project

The UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) intends to fund the construction of a geothermal energy project on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean. Monserrat is a UK Overseas Territory and have a constitutional relationship with the UK, and their citizens have a right to British citizenship. The UK government is committed under the United Nations charter “to promote to the utmost the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories”. DFID’s priorities for Montserrat is to meet the “reasonable assistance needs” of its citizens as cost effectively as possible, while help the island to become more self-sufficient where possible. Montserrat’s economy is 100% fossil fuel based. This is unsustainable position from an environmental, climate change and economic perspective. Electricity prices in Montserrat are some of the highest in the world and are significantly influenced by fluctuations in oil prices on the world market. To date exploratory drilling of the two wells was completed in late 2013, with the testing programme completed in July 2014. These wells are able to produce a level of output, but currently not of the capacity to provide fully the required energy output to remove the requirement for fossil fuel based energy production. A third well drilling programme is now proposed to be used as a reinjection / production well to allow the two existing wells to have a combined potential generation capacity of 3MW of power.

Estimated cost of works excluding VAT: Range: between £2,500,000.00 and £4,000,000.00 GBP (EC$10,600,000 and EC$16,959,000)

Division into lots: no

Source: IGA