SENER’S NEWS nº34 SENER consolidates its position in Mexico with III Luis de Santiago Pérez Managing Director of Railways TERMESOL-50, S.A. A new project for generating solar electricity The SENER Foundation is also present in social projects 20 37 summary 04 Article SENER consolidates its position in Mexico with III 08 Interview Borja Zárraga, Country Manager for SENER Mexico 10 Tribune 12 Luis de Santiago Pérez, Managing Director of Railways 12 Up-to-date Corporate Space Actuation and Control Systems Power and Process Civil and Architrecture Marine 40 Group 42 In Brief 44 Profiles Carlos Sánchez Tarifa 46 Senet Practical notes Contributors: José Manuel Almoguera, Fernando Alonso, Rafael Alonso-Urquijo, Francisco Javier Aguirre, Jerónimo Angulo, Published by: SENER Corporate Communication Department. Ángel Ares, Fernando Artigas, Antonio Ayuso, Álvaro Azcárraga, Jaime Borrego, José Manuel Belmonte, José Edit staff: Oihana Casas, Pilar García, Antonia Gutiérrez, Rosana Madroñal Ignacio Bueno, Carolina Cazorla, Alfonso Cebollero, Fernando del Campo, Carlos del Castillo, Juan Manuel del and Antonio Ramos. Cura, Guillermo Dierssen, Miguel Domingo, Ángel Fernández, José María Fernández, Roberto Fernández, Ernesto Photographic documentation: Oihana Casas and Lourdes Olabarria. Ferrándiz, Sonia Fraile, Luis Gabellieri, Luis García, Augusto Gómez, Enrique Gómez, Carlos González, Michael Layout: Patricia Harnist. William Hardt, Joseba Ibarbia, Juan Ivorra, Francisco Jiménez, Óscar Juliá, Jesús Laforgue, Ricardo Martín, Advertising: Lourdes Olabarria. Miguel Méndez, Arturo Olivé, Xavier Pascual, Rafael Quintana, Juan Luis Ramos, Manuel Rodríguez, Fernando Legal deposit number: BI-1804-00 Imprenta Berekintza Sánchez, Jesús Simón, Gonzalo José Taubmann, Mirko Toman, Luis Vázquez, Javier Viñals, Borja Zárraga. [ ARTICLE] SENER consolidates its position in Mexico with III The association with the Mexican engineering company constitutes a solid platform with excellent business prospects Last June the purchase agreement of 40% of the Mexican engineering company III, S.A. de C.V. was finalised with the option for acquiring 100% in 2010. This way SENER started a new phase in Mexico, whilst at the same time marking the end of a process started in 2005, when the companies established a strategic alliance. By virtue of this alliance, SENER entered the Mexican market hand in hand with one of the main national engineering companies, at the same time as strengthening III's contracting capacity. In the last three years, the two companies have carried out important work together consolidating their presence in Latin America and establishing a big platform for penetrating the complex North American scenario. SENER’s offices in Mexico DF. [ ARTICLE] SENER's presence in Mexico dates back to the 1970's when its main clients were Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), a company it created a delegation in the country as a part of its foreign that it has continued to collaborate with since that time. In commercial office network. However, it was in 2005 when the 1980, the number of shareholders was reduced, and Elena company decided to consolidate itself in this market, particularly Oropesa and Eduardo Bosque became the only owners of in the Power and Process area, which offered good business the company. In the decade of the 1980's, III, S.A. de C.V. opportunities. After the economic crisis suffered by the country lived the moments of splendour of engineering in Mexico, a in the 1990's, when many companies went bankrupt, the period in which it carried out the integration of the oil port of panorama was promising. Mexico recovered thanks to Salina Cruz. In this project, III was responsible for the design agreements with North America, and the revalorisation of some of the first storage system in Mexico to use tanks with a of its most important resources, such as oil, at the same time capacity for 500,000 barrels. as increasing the stability in the country and the currency Later on, the company was able to economically survive the appreciated. In this situation, with the national companies economic crisis undergone by the country in the 1990's. Whilst weakened by the crisis, Mexico required infrastructures, other large Mexican engineering companies disappeared, III especially in energy. And SENER, who already knew the ground, progressed on the national market. The company increased its decided that it was time to return. clients several times over, and moved into other sectors, and so, in 1998 started to design electric energy generation plants, amongst which a simple cycle plant in Bolivia for General Electric, and combined cycle power plants in Mexico, such as Hermosillo, El Sauz, Emilio Portes Gil and Valladolid. Afterwards, other noteworthy projects arrived such as the PEMEX alkylation unit in Tula and the Swing polyethylene plant, also belonging to PEMEX, in Morelos. 05 SENER Mexico current offices. “When a company reaches a new market, it must adapt to its culture. In the case of Mexico, this culture was very different to ours” recalls the director of SENER's Power and Process International Development director, Jesús Laforgue, “for this reason, we were clear from the beginning that our presence them needed to start by collaborating with a Mexican company”. SENER decided to look for a partner with a strong presence in this area, a task entrusted to Jesús Laforgue. The job of Combined cycle power plant in Valladolid (Mexico), one of the main assessing the Mexican companies started in 2003 and at the projects of III. beginning of 2005, Laforgue went to Mexico to sound out on the ground the companies with the best results. He soon A strategic alliance that is bearing its fruit focused on the engineering company III, with 30 years of The strategic alliance between III and SENER was signed in experience in power, process and industrial plant projects in March 2005. A few months later, in July, the first Spanish both Mexico and other Latin American countries. In addition to engineer, Borja Zárrage, new SENER Country Manager in seeing the solidity of its experience, Jesús Laforgue quickly Mexico, moved permanently to the III offices, soon followed identified III as the most similar engineering company in the by Estíbaliz Fernández, as Finance Director. Ratifying this conception and way of working to SENER, which made him agreement called for a fully operative SENER division in the consider, and rightly so, that the two companies could get country, and in 2006, on the company's 50th anniversary, along well. SENERMEX Ingeniería y Sistemas S.A. de C.V. was founded. At this time, III's progression was remarkable. The Mexican III, S.A. de C.V., a story of growth company with a workforce of over 200 employees, worked III, S.A. de C.V. was established in 1976, in Mexico City, for clients such as the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE), named Impulsora Industrial de Ingeniería, S.A. de C.V., by PEMEX, Luz y Fuerza, BurnsS&Roe, Mitsubishi, Dragados or four engineers, Elena Oropesa Moreno, Juan José Cabello Abener and undertook projects in the mining-metallurgic area, Fuentes, Fernando Pelsmaker Ibáñez and Eduardo Bosque with big jobs for Ausenco, with whom it currently has a strategic Lastra. The social objective of the company was the design alliance, and Mittal. and carrying out of basic and detailed engineering for industrial The first joint contracts did not take long to arrive, including plants, in which the four engineers were experienced. Amongst the engineering design for the Termozulia II combined cycle [ ARTICLE] The excellent relationship between the two engineering companies has grown in time up to the signing, in June 2007, of the purchase agreement of 40% of the Mexican company. SENER's President, Jorge Sendagorta, and III, S.A. de C.V.'s President, Eduardo Bosque, signed this agreement in Mexico City, with the option for purchasing 100% at the beginning of 2010. SENER's Power and Process Strategic Business Unit General Manager, Francisco Jiménez, and the General Vice President of III, Elena Oropesa were also present in this act. Termozulia II combined cycle power plant, of 500MW, in Maracaibo (Venezuela). As Country Manager, Borja Zárraga has experienced power plant, in Venezuela, with 500MW of power. It has been each step of this purchase “I think that it has been a long but a Project with more than 150,000 hours of work, in which satisfactory process for everyone involved, including the SENER has carried out the basic engineering and III the detailed Bosque family, the founders of III, and SENER”. Borja Zárraga engineering. Juan Ivorra, from SENER, and Joseph Schatz and points out that the collaboration experience between the two Isidro Becerril, from III, have been the main people in charge companies has been positive, and SENER has, hand in hand of this successful project. with III, a growing presence in Mexico. 06 Together with this big job, III has carried out others such as After the signing, both companies have announced that they the closure of the San Lorenzo combined cycle power plant, expect to extend their projects on the North American market, awarded by CFE to Dragados and the installation of fire particularly in the USA. III's strong presence in the region, as protection systems for Nuevo PEMEX in Tabasco, amongst the Mexican engineering company benchmark, is added to other refinery and petrochemical projects. The basic engineering SENER's excellent relationships of with big construction of the Lázaro Cárdenas Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) regasifier for companies, which favours big business prospects. Repsol, and the work carried out in big offers such as the repowering of the Laguna Verde nuclear power station, the Manzanillo regasification power plant or the Aguaprieta hybrid with solar combined cycle power plant are worthy of mention. SENER has recently been awarded the turnkey project for the Norte combined cycle thermal power plants, a plant, which UNIÓN FENOSA is designing in Durango (Mexico) for CFE.