Oman’s first wind turbine factory has a Chinese EPC contractor and a Chinese technology licensor. The part it went to a university for was people.
On 4 February this year, Mawarid Turbine Company and the National University of Science and Technology signed a cooperation agreement to qualify approximately 321 Omani graduates for the plant being built in the Special Economic Zone at Duqm. Oman News Agency described the group as the first national batch to receive specialised industrial training in wind turbine manufacturing. Mustafa bin Mohammed al Hinai, CEO of Mawarid Turbine, and Dr Ali bin Saud al Bimani, the university’s Vice-Chancellor, signed it. Dr Abeer bint Ali al Kalbani, who directs national competency development and local content at Mawarid Turbine, said the programme would start that same month and would concentrate on blade manufacturing and the assembly of nacelle units. I have not found a published account of where that cohort stands today, so read this as February’s plan rather than this month’s result.
Four months later, on 10 June, the Oman subsidiary of China Energy Engineering Corporation’s Shanxi institute took the EPC contract for roughly 90,000 square metres of workshops and supporting facilities at Duqm. Shanghai Electric Wind Power holds the technology licence and the knowledge-transfer role, which includes sending Omani engineers and technicians to China for training.
What I keep coming back to is the sourcing pattern. The plant is Omani-owned, Chinese-built and Chinese-licensed. The workforce is the one input Oman went to a domestic university to secure.
In my reading, most localisation targets in this region are written as percentages and gigawatts. My view is that blade layup and nacelle assembly are hand skills that take years to become reliable, and 321 is a number you can count.
Who is running the second batch?
