The government is due to give the thumbs-up on Tuesday to a call for tender for the selection of a project manager for the troubled Vasiliko LNG terminal.
The decision will be taken at a scheduled meeting of the board of the Natural Gas Infrastructure Company (Etyfa), the owner of the LNG import terminal project.
The meeting will convene at 10am, said Etyfa’s vice-chairman Giorgos Petrou.
“Tomorrow morning we will go ahead with the decision to issue a call for tender for hiring a project manager for the terminal,” Petrou told the Cyprus News Agency.
“Already the text has been drafted, and tomorrow the [Etyfa] board will approve it,” he noted.
The project manager’s job will be to “guide Etyfa and monitor the contractors”.
This will be the first necessary next step in rebooting the stalled LNG terminal project. After that, Etyfa will invite bids for the actual contractors.
In mid-July the Chinese-led consortium unilaterally broke the contract for the construction of the LNG import facility.
The contractor cited “an untenable situation” for itself due primarily to delayed payments by Etyfa. But Etyfa denies the allegation.
The contract with the CMC consortium had been signed back in December 2019. Subsequently, the contractor had submitted four delivery timetables – September 2022, July 2023, October 2023 and July 2024.
After the consortium terminated the contract, the government has been insisting it will finish the half-completed project by hiring new sub-contractors from scratch.
The LNG import project is seen as critical to driving down electricity prices through the use of natural gas.
