Marcopolis presents the Saudi Arabia Report focused on the investments, doing business, economy and other topics featuring interviews with key executives. The sectors under review in this issue are industry, real-estate, ICT, investments, banking sector, telecom sector and many more.
Saudi Electricity Company and its subsidiary companies provide and supply electricity and power throughout Saudi Arabia, the largest market in the Middle East. The Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) is the merger of the 4 (east, west, center, and south) former Saudi Electricity Companies (SCECO) and 10 private power companies.
These supplied around 85% of power in the country, and in, 2000, the various SCECOs and private power companies became the SEC. It is the biggest utility company in the country, employing over 28,000 people, with total assets around $63 billion and market capitalization of $18.8 billion.
Eighty-one percent (81%) of the company is owned by the Saudi government and Aramco, and the rest is held by private companies. The restructuring of the SCECO system was intended to streamline the Saudi power sector, with the expectation that SEC would develop three separate companies for generation, transmission, and distribution.
The partial privatization of SEC encouraged the company to initiate some public and private sector partnerships (PPPs) with the aim of attracting investors in the area of power generation for several mega projects including Rabegh and Alqariah.
SEC also participated on a 50/50 basis with the Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) in establishing the Water and Electricity Limited Company, provided that SEC would be the sole buyer of water and electricity Former Aramco power systems director, Ziyad Bin Mohammed Al-Shiha, is president and CEO of SEC.