Energy rivals mining company Czech Coal and state-controlled power producer ČEZ appear to have thrown a new power plant into their talks to resolve a bitter battle over coal supplies.
Business daily Hospodářské noviny (HN) reported on Tuesday that ČEZ is now offering the mining company its little-loved Chvaletice power plant, as well as its existing Počerady unit, in a bid to seal a deal over new coal supplies.
ČEZ and Czech Coal have been at loggerheads over a long-term supply agreement for around six years. The almost 70-percent state controlled power company says the two sides agreed a cooperation agreement in 2005 that should have been followed by mid-2007 by a deal to supply coal for up to the year 2055. But the deal has never been hammered out, with the result that ČEZ has been forced to freeze plans for a new coal plant at Počerady.
‘The biggest commercial battle on the Czech scene is drawing to a conclusion.’
HN suggested on Tuesday that the battle is now drawing to a close, with ČEZ’s chief executive Daniel Beneš putting the two existing power plants on the table in exchange for a new coal supply deal. “The biggest commercial battle on the Czech scene is drawing to a conclusion,” the newspaper commented, adding that an existing contact between ČEZ and the coal company owned by Czech billionaire Pavel Tykač runs out by the end of the year.
Chvaletice, an East Bohemian power plant which ČEZ had intended to transfer to Energetický a Průmyslový Holding (EPH) as part of larger deal focused on the Energotrans power plant north of Prague before the deal fell through, is the new element in talks, the paper said. ČEZ is reported to have pulled out due to worries whether it could guarantee coal supplies to the 800 MW plant. Czech Coal, formerly Mostecké uhelné společnost (MUS), should not have such concerns.
ČEZ spokeswoman Eva Novaková told Czech Position that negotiations between the two sides were continuing and had never been interrupted. She declined to comment on the contents.
Chvaletice, distant from the brown coal fields that fuel ČEZ’s plants, has already been spun off into an independent unit in a bid to work out its costs and better prepare it for possible sale.
Czech Coal has long been seeking to enter the electricity production market, outlining plans to build its own power plants and complaining to the European Commission in Brussels that ČEZ has been trying to shut it out of the market.
Offering Czech Coal a power plant could take some of the competition heat off ČEZ, whose Energotrans deal is foundering amid an in-depth probe by Czech competition officials who suspect it could give the company too much of the domestic electricity production market.
The Počerady plant was alrady part of talks between the two companies which were reported in October 2009.
