(Xinhua is the Official Press Agency of the People's Republic of China)

KATHMANDU (Nov. 4) XINHUA - The American power company Enron Corp. is considering to invest in Nepal's hydro power sector and export electricity to China, Nepal's northern neighbor, senior officials here said today.

Such a move would be a breakthrough for the development of the abundant water resources in Nepal which so far had seen its southern neighbor India as the only market for its surplus hydro power, they said.

Enron Corp. last month put forth a 9-billion-US dollar proposal to the Nepali government outlining its intention to invest two major hydro power projects in the country on build-own-operate-transfer (BOTT) basis, the officials was quoted by a local newspaper as saying today.

The American power conglomerate expects to spend 800 million dollars of that amount on the 402-megawatt Arun project in eastern Nepal with the rest going to West Nepal's Karnali project with a generating capacity between 3,000 to 4,000 megawatts, according to the paper.

Officials said that an expert committee of the Water Resources Ministry is studying the proposal of the American company.

The company plans to sling high-voltage transmission lines across the Himalayas and link up with the nearest power grid in Chengdu of Southwest China's Sichuan province, about 2,500 km away from Nepal, a Nepali expert said.

Of the over 8 billion dollars earmarked for the Karnali project, Enron plans to spend two billion dollars to build the transmission lines to China, he said.

However, private water resources experts here have questioned the economic feasibility of the Enron proposal, citing the difficulties of slinging power lines across the Himalayas, the far distance between Nepal and inland China and the rapid power sector development in China.