"A Quantum Leap for STEAG"/Iskenderun Power Plant on stream after just 39 months of construction work

ESSEN (Germany)(ots/APROTEXT) - STEAG reports success: Uponcompletion of construction work within a period of only 39months, the biggest power plant project in the company's historyis now on stream. Absolutely on schedule, the hard coal-firedpower plant located in Southeast Turkey went into commercialoperation on 22 November 2003. "This is a quantum leap forSTEAG," said Dr. Jochen Melchior, CEO of the company.

As from today, the two generating units every day will beproviding a capacity of 1,210 megawatts to the public Turkishenergy utility TEAS - enough to cover as much as eight percentof the national power demand. With a capital expenditure of 1.5billion US dollar, the plant in Iskenderun is the largest Germaninvestment project in Turkey, and STEAG's largest investmentproject in Turkey, too.

As recently as about three years ago, the foundation stone ofthe power plant was laid on a "greenfield" site on the shores ofIskenderun Bay; trial operation commenced already in summer thisyear. Despite of difficult boundary conditions, the projectpartners STEAG, Siemens and GAMA managed to bring the plantpunctually on stream. Thus STEAG now operates a second powerplant abroad, besides the Termopaipa Power Plant in Colombia.

In the power industry, not only the power plant itself butalso the so-called Transshipper is considered to be a high-techfacility. This Transshipper is the largest floating unloadingcrane for hard coal and transfers offshore as much as 30,000tons of coal per day from large ocean-going vessels which can notanchor in the shallow bay to smaller transport units which canthen discharge the coal to on-shore conveyor belts.

"With the new plant now in operation, we are looking ahead to2004 with confidence" said Mr. Melchior.

Pictures and further informations are available for downloadat www.steag.de

Contact: Dr. Peter Rzeznitzeck STEAG Aktiengesellschaft Dr.Peter Rzeznitzeck Leiter Konzernkommunikation/ Head of CorporateCommunication Rüttenscheider Str. 1-3 45128 Essen Germany phone:+49 (201) 801-2427 fax: +49 (201) 801-1195 mobile: +49 (172)2325739 mailto:peter.rzeznitzeck@steag.de http://www.Steag.de

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