US firm tipped to buy NI power station

US POWER giant AES is reportedly on the point of buying the Ballylumford power station in Co Antrim in a £100 million-plus (€121 million) deal.

A deal to buy the power facility from BG Group is expected to become public shortly, although the price tag is unlikely to approach the £300 million touted some months ago. Industry website SparkSpread yesterday suggested a consideration of £150 million was more probable.

A spokesman for BG, originally a division of British Gas, declined to comment on the matter yesterday, while a spokeswoman for AES did not return phone calls.

If the deal is completed, it will make AES the North’s biggest power producer since the firm already owns the Kilroot power plant near Carrickfergus, also in Co Antrim. Kilroot produces about one-third of the North’s electricity and employs 140 people.

Ballylumford, located close to Larne, is a larger player in the Irish electricity market, satisfying about 9 per cent of demand on the island as a whole, both directly and through sales to NIE Energy.

The plant is possibly best-known for the notoriety it attracted during the Ulster Workers’ Council strike in 1974, when a cessation of work effectively brought the North to a standstill.

Ballylumford has been converted to gas since being acquired by BG in 1992, with the company also spending £200 million on a new plant on the same site. Through its Premier Power operating subsidiary, BG employs 172 people in the area.

Like BG, AES entered the power market in the North after privatisation in 1992, marking its first move outside the US market. The acquisition of Drax, Britain’s largest power station, followed but was less successful and the asset was ultimately handed back to AES’s lenders at a loss of almost £2 billion. – (Additional reporting, Bloomberg)