Drilling operations at Indonesia’s $1.5-billion, 330-MW Sarulla geothermal power plant are progressing “at speed,” according to Hila Gantz, spokesperson for Ormat, the facility’s designer. Sarulla, in Tapanulia Utara district, North Sumatra, will be one of the world’s biggest geothermal plants when construction is completed in 2018.
Engineering, procurement and construction contractor Hyundai and drilling contractor Halliburton have reached an advanced stage in infrastructure works, according to Gantz. Investors and other stakeholders, who from the sidelines have witnessed a two-decade shelving of the project attributed mainly to the late-1990s Asian economic crisis, have welcomed the news.