But weeks after its official opening, the station – nestled among crumbled black rocks in the arid desert south of Amman – has become a source of heated controversy.
The deal surrounding the construction of the plant has put Jordan in a bind because of billions of dollars in debt to China for a plant whose capacity is no longer required due to other agreements that Amman entered into since the project was built.
This resulted in inflaming tensions between China and Jordan, and the Jordanian government challenged the deal amid an international legal battle between the two countries.
With the growth of China’s influence and the withdrawal of the United States from the Middle East, the Attarat station – which was built for $ 2.1 billion – became a model for China’s policy that relied on burdening many Asian and African countries with debt, in a warning to the countries of the region.
“Atarat is an example of what the Belt and Road Initiative was and has become,” says Jesse Marks, a fellow at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, referring to China’s blueprint to build global infrastructure and boost its global political influence.
“Jordan has become an interesting case not of China’s success in the region, but of how China has become involved in middle-income countries,” he added.
The Attarat plant, which produces electricity from oil shale, was designed about 15 years ago to fulfill national aspirations for Jordan’s energy independence, but it has become a source of anger in Jordan now because of its high price.
If the original agreement continues, Jordan will have to pay China $8.4 billion over 30 years for the electricity generated from the plant.
And because it possesses only limited natural resources in a region full of oil and gas, Jordan came out of this deal as a loser, while the Kingdom was hoping to achieve huge gains.
The Jordanian Attarat Energy Company proposed to the government in 2012 to extract oil shale from the desert and construct a station that would use it to provide 15 percent of the country’s electricity supply.
Company officials said the proposal fit with the government’s growing desire to achieve energy self-sufficiency amid unrest stemming from the unrest that occurred in the Arab world in 2011. But extracting oil shale has proven difficult, expensive and dangerous.
With work on the project delayed, Jordan concluded a $15 billion agreement to import huge quantities of natural gas at competitive prices from Israel in 2014, and interest in the Attarat plant waned.
Muhammad al-Maaytah, CEO of El Attarat, says he has floated the project all over the world, from the United States and Europe to Japan and South Korea, but to no avail.
In a move that surprised Jordan, Chinese banks offered Amman more than $1.6 billion in loans to finance the construction of the station in 2017.
The Chinese state energy company (Guangdong Energy Group) bought a 45 percent stake in Attarat, making it the owner of the lion’s share in implementing the Belt and Road Initiative launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping outside China.
Experts say this investment was part of a broader Chinese push into an Arab world hungry for foreign investment. Funding for large infrastructure projects came with political strings attached.
“China doesn’t carry American concepts with it,” said David Schenker, former US assistant secretary of state for Middle East affairs. “We’ve already had some concerns about democracy, transparency, and corruption. But for authoritarian countries, there is an allure (compatibility) that brings them closer to China.”
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