Bangkok Post
October 9, 2003

The Thai and Chinese governments will talk about investment in the Salween dam project during the Apec meeting, said Sitthiporn Rattanopas, governor of Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat).

Mr Sitthiporn said the China Export and Import Bank, which is taking part in building the Three Gorges dam in China, the world’s largest dam, had shown an interest in investing.

The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand was touting the idea of building Salween dam along the Thai-Burmese border.

The project would comprise two dams. The first dam, called the upper dam, would be built on the border of the Salween wildlife sanctuary and able to generate 4,540 megawatts of power.

The lower dam on the Salween national park would generate 792 megawatts.
Together, they would flood about 20,000 rai of prime forestland on the Thai side and about 35,000 rai on the Burmese side. They would cost 277 billion baht (US$6.15 billion).

The project was part of the Asean Power Grid project to build network of power grids for Asean member countries. Mr Sitthiporn said the talks on the Salween project would only be preliminary and no contractual commitment would be made.

“Don’t protest against this dam because Egat is not going to build it.
Please give us time to conduct study,” said Mr Sitthiporn while adding the project would be impossible without public consent. Mr Sitthiporn said the price of electricity would be reduced by 15 satangs forevery kilowatt-hour unit if the project was built.