Another setback for the 850 MW Işalniţa gas-fired power plant project

The tender for the construction of the 850 MW Işalniţa gas-fired power plant, a contract estimated at 750 million euros, has been cancelled, for the second time.

“This procedure was automatically cancelled because on the deadline for submitting bids, none of the registered bidders encrypted the financial offer/or did not respond to all electronic evaluation factors, as the case may be.”

The message was raised on the public procurement platform yesterday, January 30, the deadline for submitting bids for the contract estimated at 3.7 billion lei. It is the second setback for this project.

The tender for the “Construction of an approx. 850MW natural gas-fired power plant in Ișalnița (“CCGT Ișalnița”) – design, procurement, execution of works, commissioning and long-term maintenance services” was first launched in June 2024. In the autumn, the tender was cancelled due to lack of offers. “This procedure was automatically cancelled because on the deadline for submitting offers none of the registered bidders encrypted the financial offer or did not respond to all electronic evaluation factors, as the case may be,” the public tender system wrote as an explanation for the cancellation.

The estimated value at that time was 2.8 billion lei, approximately 560 million euros.

Last year, in March, the project company put the construction of the new combined cycle gas-fired power plant in Ișalnița up for auction again. The value of the contract increased by over a third compared to the one advanced the previous year and reached 3.7 billion lei – about 750 million euros.

The deadline for submitting bids was postponed twice, the first time to the end of December 2025, the second time to the end of January 2026, following requests from potential bidders, including one from the large Chinese group Dongfang, which could have entered this project with Mitsubishi technology.

However, this second tender was also cancelled.

Romania has now committed to the European Commission to complete and put into operation by 2029 the 2 gas-fired power plants – Ișalnița and Turceni, which are part of the reorganization plan of the Oltenia Energy Complex. The two projects are being developed by two project companies in which CE Oltenia is also involved, the one from Turceni with Tinmar Energy (each part has 50%), and the one from Ișalnița with Alro (60% CE Oltenia and 40% Alro).