Armenia’s Vorotan hydropower plant under new ownership, CivilNet finds

By Mark Dovich

Armenia’s largest hydroelectric power plant came under new ownership two years ago — though this had not been reported in the country until CivilNet’s Armenian team broke the story this week.

In a more than $2-billion deal in 2022, the U.S. private equity firm KKR acquired Contour Global, the British power generation company that took 100% control of the Vorotan hydropower cascade from the Armenian government a decade ago.

Shortly after the deal went through, Alvina Abajyan, a relative by marriage to Armenia’s top diplomat, took over as general manager of Vorotan, which is located in the country’s strategically important Syunik region.

The deal’s impact on the ultimate ownership of the 404-megawatt plant, which produces some 13-15% of Armenia’s total energy, has not been publicly addressed by the government.

Contour Global’s takeover of Vorotan in 2014 marked the first multimillion-dollar Western investment in Armenia’s energy sector, and to this day, the power station remains one of the few major enterprises in Armenia that is not under Russian control.

In its latest review of public sector finances last year, the Armenian government said Vorotan’s “fiscal risk status remains ‘considerable,’ given the company’s financial condition,” even while noting that the plant has turned a profit every year since 2021. The government did not explain how it reached that conclusion, and no other details were made immediately available.