First US investment project: Texas gas plant, with nuclear power under review for the second

A gas-fired power project in Encinal, Texas, has been selected as the first project under South Korea’s $350 billion investment in the United States. The project is valued at about 31 trillion won, and the government has begun the process of reporting it to parliament.

The selection followed differences between South Korea and the United States over the project’s scale, but the two sides have found common ground, the article says. A US nuclear power project is now being strongly considered as the second investment.

The government presented candidate projects, their estimated sizes, the progress of negotiations with Washington and the next steps at a closed-door meeting between the ruling party and government on the seventh. Democratic Party lawmakers from parliament’s finance and economy committee and its industry, trade, small and medium enterprises committee attended. Trade Negotiation Office chief Park Jung-sung and working-level negotiators explained the details for the government.

The Encinal project aims to build 6.3 gigawatts of generating capacity to meet rising electricity demand in Texas as artificial intelligence data centers expand. The plan would first develop 1.4 gigawatts of gas-turbine generation, followed in stages by 4.9 gigawatts of high-efficiency combined-cycle facilities.