DUSHANBE (TCA) — Italian company Salini Impregilo has won the international tender for the design, purchases, and construction of the Rogun hydro power plant in Tajikistan, Avesta news agency reports with reference to the website of Open Joint-Stock Company Rogun HPP.
The Rogun HPP, with a dam of 335 meters high, will be the largest hydro power plant in Central Asia, with annual electricity generation of 13 billion kilowatt-hours.
The Rogun hydropower project was initially designed in the 1970s as part of the development of the Vakhsh River cascade for integrated economic development in the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union. The Rogun site is located upstream of the existing Nurek hydropower dam, which has an active storage capacity of 4.2 bcm of water. Construction of the Rogun project began in 1982 but halted with the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the ensuing civil war in Tajikistan (1992-97). In 1993 the existing coffer dam was washed away and the tunnels constructed in the 1980s were damaged. The Government of Tajikistan began rehabilitation of the existing tunnels and underground civil works in 2008.
According to international calculations, the Rogun project requires between $3 billion and $5 billion.
The government of Tajikistan in 2010 began a campaign to sell Rogun shares to Tajik companies and population to raise funds to complete the construction.
The Tajik government hopes the power plant’s completion would put an end to the country’s chronic power shortages.
Construction of the Rogun HPP is opposed by downstream Uzbekistan which says the plant would reduce the flow of water to Uzbek cotton fields.
