[China Co-Financing Fund] IDB administers $50 million loan from CHC for 2.4GW Ituango Hydropower Plant Construction Project (Linked to Record ID#54635)

[China Co-Financing Fund] IDB administers $50 million loan from CHC for 2.4GW Ituango Hydropower Plant Construction Project On December 29, 2017, Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM) — a state-owned company in Colombia — signed a $1 billion loan agreement (the "IDB Invest Loan") with the Inter-American Investment Corporation ("IDB Invest"), the private sector division of the InterAmerican Development Bank.

The IDB Invest Loan has an A/B structure in which the IDB Group funded a $300 million tranche (“tranche A”) and a group of international commercial banks and institutional investors from North America, Europe and Asia (CDPQ, KFW IPEX, BNP Paribas, ICBC, Sumitomo Mitsui, BBVA and Banco Santander) funded a $650 million tranche (“tranche B”).

All members of the lending syndicate — including ICBC — that participated in tranche B reportedly contributed $108.3 million. ICBC’s contribution is captured via Record ID#54365.

Additionally, the IDB Invest Loan included $50 million of resources from the China Co-Financing Fund for Latin America and the Caribbean, which is managed by IDB Invest.

The loan proceeds were to be disbursed gradually over a 4-year disbursement period.

Interest on the IDB Invest Loan was set to accrue at a rate of LIBOR plus 2.125% and 2.75% payable semi-annually in arrears. EPM can voluntarily prepay the IDB Invest Loan at any time.

All payment obligations under the IDB Invest Loan rank in all respects at least pari passu in priority of payment with all other present and future unsecured and unsubordinated external indebtedness of the borrower.

The IBD Invest Loan provides for certain financial covenants, which are: the net debt to Adjusted EBITDA ratio must be greater than 4.0 and the interest coverage ratio to be less than 3.0. As of June 30, 2019, the total outstanding balance under this loan was Ps.1,398,234 million.

The purpose of the project is to build a 2,400 MW (2 GW) hydropower facility and dam over the Cauca River — the second largest river in the country — in the northern region of Antioquia.

The project consists of a 79 km long reservoir with a flood area of 3,800ha and an active capacity of 980 million cubic meters, and a 225 meter high earth-core rock-filled embankment dam with a volume of 20 million cubic meters. The dam will have a controlled spillway with a design flow of 22,600 cubic meters a second.

The powerhouse will be underground with eight 300MW generating units, each driven by a headrace tunnel equipped with Francis turbines and vertical shaft synchronous generators. Water will be fed to the turbine chambers through eight tunnels. There will be two separate tunnels as well, for returning the water to the Cauca River.

The hydraulic head of the power plant will be 197m. A 500kV main substation will be built outside the dam to transmit the power generated from the underground powerhouse.

Upon completion, the Ituango hydropower plant will represent approximately 18 percent of the country’s total installed power capacity, and generate approximately 13,900 GWh of renewable electricity per year.

A consortium formed by the Camargo Correa (a Brazilian company), Colombians Conconcreto, and Coninsa is responsible for project implementation. Construction began in September 2011 and the project was originally scheduled to reach completion by the end of 2013. However, as of June 30, 2019, the project had achieved a physical progress rate of 72.7%.

However, this project stalled in 2018 due to a geological event. To understand what happened, it is important to know how a dam is built. This process involves the construction of different tunnels to divert the water while raising the dam. As the project neared completion, EPM closed two of the three tunnels it had built.

Then, on April 28, 2018 a landslide near the site blocked the remaining tunnel. With rain and new landslides, water rose to critical levels.

That led EPM to what would be only one of a series of hard decisions: on May 10, 2018, the company flooded the dam’s turbine rooms to release the pressure being exerted on the structure by the river. Water levels were reduced, but all the equipment that had already been installed suffered irreversible damage.

Two days later, one of the sealed tunnels ceded the pressure, unblocked and caused flash floods downstream. Over 113,000 people living downstream of the dam have already been evacuated, due to the risk of a collapse.

Even today, the risk of new landslides from nearby mountains still remain, which could potentially compromise the integrity of the entire project.

The attempt to save the dam includes the construction of a new project tunnel to reduce the levels of the flooded river, which would take several months.

Subsequent investigation found that the collapse was caused by poor engineering, not following construction standards, and inadequate construction.

On December 12, 2018, IDB Invest granted EPM a waiver for its non-compliance with certain environmental covenants under the loan agreement caused by ‘the Ituango Contingency’.

EPM and IDB Invest subsequently began negotiating an amendment to the loan agreement to revise the environmental covenants. Project is expected to reach full capacity by 2024. As of March 11, 2021 the project had reached 82% completion. In late 2022, turbines 1 and 2 started operating. On October 27, 2023 turbines 3 and 4 started operating.

The new deadline date has been pushed to 2027 for turbines 5-8.