Ormat Industries Ltd. (TASE: ORMT) subsidiary Ormat Technologies Inc. (NYSE: ORA) on Thursday announced that its Puna geothermal plant in Hawaii is currently operating at 17 megawatts, instead of a planned 30 megawatts, due to a decline of the steam supply to the power plant. The company said that decline has cut the plant's revenue by $1 million a month, based on current energy rates.
Ormat said that Puna plant generated 25 MW after repair work on production wells that was completed in the fourth quarter of 2009, and that it had expected output to recover to about 30 MW.
Ormat said that it was undertaking a quick repair through a chemical cleaning of the wells. If this is not successful, the company will have to perform a mechanical cleaning, which will be more expensive and take more time.
Ormat also plans to begin drilling a new production well at Puna in the next few days. It hopes that the well will be completed and hooked up to the power plant by the end of June, in order to bring the power plant to full capacity. The company estimates the cost of the new well at $11 million.
Ormat Technologies also announced that subsidiary Ormat Andina SA, has been awarded a 26,000-acre (104,000-dunam) geothermal exploration concession in northern Chile near the San Pablo-San Pedro twin volcanic complex. The site is close to access roads and to copper mines, which could be potential customers of electricity. The company will conduct in preliminary testing and studies to assess the feasibility of the site for commercial development.
Ormat Technologies' share rose 1% on the NYSE on Friday to $34.01, giving a market cap of $1.54 billion. Ormat Industries' share fell 1.1% by midday today to NIS 31.59, giving a market cap of NIS 3.79 billion.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 7, 2010
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