Reuters reported that Greece plans to sell two coal-fired power stations belonging to its dominant electricity utility PPC to comply with European Union competition rules and the terms of an EU/IMF bailout.

The European Commission has been pushing Greece for years to lift PPC's de-facto monopoly on production of lignite, a form of soft brown coal that forms the backbone of electricity production in the country.

PPC is the EU second-biggest and the world sixth biggest producer of lignite with total annual production of about 60 million tonnes. Opening-up by 40% of the lignite market has been part of the economic reforms required by the country EU/IMF bailout.

Mr George Papaconstantinou Energy Minister of Greece said "We believe the negotiations (with the EU on selling the units) will be completed in the next weeks."

On sale will be the units at Amyntaion, North West Greece and Megalopolis in the country south. According to PPC documents, the two units have a combined installed capacity of 900 MW. Mr Papaconstantinou did not elaborate on when the units would be sold.
Mr Papaconstantinou said apart from the two power station sales, Greece plans to grant PPC rivals a concession to run a new lignite field at Vevi. The cash-strapped country will also tell PPC to proceed to power swaps with other energy players.

He said that all these measures combined will get Greece close to the target of opening up 40% of the lignite market.

Mr Papaconstantinou reiterated that the government was planning to sell a stake in the company in 2012 preferably to a strategic investor and not through the stock exchange. He said that another sale option would be to divest stakes in individual PPC subsidiaries to investors.

(Sourced from Reuters)