Reuters
September 12, 2006

Malaysia’s huge Bakun hydroelectric dam is three-quarters complete and within four years it will drown an area of jungle the size of Singapore. The trouble is, there is still no customer for its power.

Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia’s huge Bakun hydro-electric dam is three-quarters complete and within four years it will drown an area of jungle the size of Singapore. The trouble is, there is still no customer for its power, suggesting the project has only a matter of months to find one or risk sitting idle on completion in 2010. Malaysia gave the go-ahead for the dam 12 years ago, in the face of fierce environmental opposition, when the country was looking at a power shortage. Now, there is a power surplus. “The problem is timeframe,” Niklas Olausson, research head of brokerage CLSA, adding that it would take around 10 more years for demand in Malaysian to catch up with supply.