Florenino Pérez, CEO of Actividades de Construcción y Servicios (ACS) is making a fortune with the Castor gas storage project, which has practically tripled in costs from an original 500 million to 1.6 billion euros.
Yesterday the Minister of Industry approved the project launch, which means that property developers (comprised of 65% ACS and 35% Escal) will have to inform property developers that of increased revenues of 1.272.9 billion euros. That is to say, 772 million more than predicted. The project budget is surprisingly high if we take into account that the Planificación Energética 2005-2011 predicted that the high-priority project would cost around 500 million euros.
Escal said yesterday that "the main contractor on the Castor project has been ACS-Cobra, who has subcontracted the main work teams. More than 40 subcontracts worth more than 1 million euros were awarded through public decree, supervised by the National Energy Commission. In particular, the main contractor has been Kiewit, who has built offshore platforms for more than 400 million euros."
According to the Canadian company, in May of 2008 after ACS took control, the government granted the Concesión de Explotación