Paris, September 21, 2006 – Nexans, the worldwide leader in the cable industry, has been awarded a €100 million contract by the Abu Dhabi Water & Electricity Authority (ADWEA) to supply and install the submarine and land cables to create a new 132kV power link between Abu Dhabi’s mainland network and Delma Island.

Strong presence in the Middle East, a fast growing region
Biggest contract signed this year in the Middle East, the Delma contract underlines the strength of the high voltage power infrastructures market in an area where industrialization and energy and communication network interconnections programs accelerate. Nexans is very active in these big projects which require a lot of cables. Almost 80% of Nexans sales in this region are tied to High Voltage projects.

Nexans has two units of production in the region: in Lebanon and in Egypt.

New High Voltage link: additional 100 MW
The 45 square km Delma island is located in the extreme west of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), around 30 km offshore in the Arabian Gulf. The new power link will provide an additional 100MW of electricity to meet the growing demand of the islands’ 10,000 residents.

The Island’s new power supply will be taken from Shuweihat power station on the Abu Dhabi mainland, where a new 220/132kV substation will be established. From there it will be transmitted through two circuits of Nexans’ single core XLPE underground cables and two 3-core XLPEsubmarine cables. On Delma Island it will connect to the existing 11kV network through a new 132/11kV substation.

Nexans will commence the project by carrying out a mobilisation and route survey for the submarine cables over a route length of 40.5 km. It will then supply and install two 3-core 132kV XLPE cables with a cross-section of 300 mm2 – a total length of 81 km of cable - together with fibre optic cables for the control and monitoring of both circuits. This is the longest 3-core 132 kV XLPE cable in one single length ever delivered by Nexans.

The waters of the Arabian Gulf are quite agitated in this area, so the cables will be buried in trenches to provide additional protection.

Nexans is also supplying 50 km of single core 132kV XLPE cable for the two land cable sections of the project, each comprising two circuits of three cables. These sections are:– Shuwaihat to shore, a route length of 1.58 km; shore to Delma island substation, a route length of 6.75 km.

The cables will be manufactured at Nexans’ Halden plant in Norway. The project should be completed by the end of 2008.