Statkraft suspends Turkey hydropower project over security worries
Statkraft, Europe's largest producer of hydropower, is suspending the development of a hydropower project in Turkey due to security concerns, it said on Thursday, Reuters reported.
The 517 megawatt (MW) Cetin power plant on Botan River, a tributary of the Tigris River, was to be Statkraft's largest hydropower plant outside Norway.
"We had to suspend the project as the end to the ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish authorities resulted in armed incidents in the region, close to our site," Statkraft's Chief Executive Christian Rynning-Toennesen told Reuters.
Southeast Turkey has seen its worst violence in two decades after a 2-1/2-year ceasefire with Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants collapsed in July, reviving a conflict in which 40,000 people have been killed since 1984.
"We took the full write down on the assets, in case the plant is never built," he said.
Statkraft said it took a charge of 2.1 billion crowns ($245.5 million) due to the suspension of the Cetin project.
The state-owned utility reported a full-year net loss of 2.4 billion crowns for 2015 compared with a net profit of 3.9 billion crowns the previous year, partly due to the writedown.