ALN Kenya is delighted with the achievement of this critical milestone for the Menengai project. This follows the achievement of another critical milestone in December last year with the conclusion of finance agreements between the Project Company and the African Development Bank, the Eastern and Southern African Trade & Development Bank and the Finnish fund for Industrial Cooperation. ALN Kenyan has proudly represented the Project Company for many years as sole counsel on this unique project (including in relation to the finance mentioned above, construction and service agreements) and looks forward to the achievement of an even more critical milestone in the coming months – financial close!
In addition to the unique structure of this transaction whereby the Government of Kenya is seeking to monetise its geothermal resource pursuant to a steam supply arrangement with the Geothermal Development Corporation that was negotiated and concluded by the Project Company with ALN Kenya, the Project is also, in our view, unique given the utilisation by the Project Company and its sponsors of a largely Kenyan based team, from its internal project development team to the various consultants, including ourselves as sole legal and tax consultants for the Project Company.
Construction of the project is expected to commence during the first quarter of 2023 once a financial close has been reached.
Once completed, the project will deliver clean and cheap baseload power to the national grid and enable the Geothermal Development Corporation to monetise the available steam resources from the Menengai steam field.
The full press release is available here.
