Power ships extend the electricity grid at sea, buttheir geopolitical ramifications reach even furtherIn addressing urgent electricity demands, many countries are looking towards quick power generation systems. One emergent system is power ships: floating power plants that anchor at a harbour, plug into a national grid and generate electricity with heavy fueloil or natural gas. The Turkish companyKaradeniz Holding has become anincreasingly popular producer of power ships in the past decade. Known to its manyclients as Karpowership, this 15yearold familyowned business builds ships on spec at various shipyards in Istanbul and leases them to places with highenergy demands. Presenting their initiative as a broad and cordial campaign to bring quick and cheap electric power to those in need, Karpowership has labelled itsproject the power of friendship.After signing a powerpurchase agreement with the Electricity Company ofGhana, the Turkish company sent its Ayegl Sultan barge to the Ghanaian cityof Tema in 2015. Tema was famously masterplanned in the 1960s as an urban backdrop to the emerging port by the Greek architect and urban planner Constantinos Doxiadis, who is known for designing cities such as Baghdad, Riyadh and Islamabad. Ivisited for the first time in 2016, donning ahelmet and a high visibility safety vest with the company logo. From the ship, all the crew saw was the heavy industrial area that stretched beyond the fishing harbour: aset of refineries, aluminium smelters and power plants.At shipyards in Istanbuls Tuzla neighbourhood, theTurkish company Karadeniz Holding alsoknown as Karpowership is converting disused bulkers into power ships (lead image). A full power plant is installed on board so that the vessel can bemoored anywhere and plugged into the local electricity grid. Giant generators have been fitted inside the Fatmagul Sultan (above), moored off the shore of the Lebanese town of Zouk MosbehCredit:Izzet Noyan Yilmaz / Alamy (lead image); NABIL MOUNZER / EPAEFE / Shutterstock (above)The morning after my visit, the intense heat, loud reverberating noise and endless vibrations that characterised the ships hold lingered with me. The crew members had suggested that it had taken them no time toadapt to the sensory environment of the floating power plant, given that many of them had backgrounds as ship engineers. While Karpowership works on specific aspects of power generation, such as ensuring fuel quality, with Ghanaian mechanics and chemists who had no background in shipping, most of the crew about 120 of the 180 people on the ship consisted of engineers and technicians from Turkey. With scrubber towers on the top, workers in the middle, and engines atthe bottom level, the barge constituted anenclosed world for power production, attached to the Ghanaian grid with transmission cables stretching over theharbour. At the time, Ghanas entire electricity production was about 2,500 megawatts and Ayegl Sultan produced nearly 10 per cent of this supply. Today, Ayegl Sultan is one of dozens of floating power plants operating worldwide.Karadeniz Holding has been building andleasing floating power plants to variouscountries, including Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan and Indonesia, since 2009, after aseries of global crises including the GulfWar in 1991, the invasion of Iraq in2003 and the Great Recession in 2008 facilitated the emergence of this energy infrastructure. At shipyards in Istanbuls Tuzla neighbourhood, the company retrofits old ships, mainly bulk carriers sitting idleafter the Great Recession, to serve asplatforms for power generation.As temporary power structures, power ships have constituted technologies of deferralTheir first floating power plant, Doan Bey, arrived at Umm Qasr Port in Basra inMay 2010 and began producing 126 megawatts of electricity for the Iraqi grid. In 2010, Umm Qasr was not just Iraqs onlydeepwater port and its one maritime connection to the Arabian Gulf but also, asthe former site of Camp Bucca (the largest US military detention facility in occupied Iraq until its closure in January 2011), theplanned location for Basra Logistics City. As floating power plants, electricity production facilities had becomeappendages that could expedite theconstruction of USsponsored logistics cities, such as the one proposed in Basra.Before the 1990s, Iraq had a robust electricity grid, with a transmission capacity of 9,295 megawatts, as it had invested some of its oil revenues into constructing durable infrastructure networks. However, the effects of US aerial bombings on Iraqs electricity infrastructure in 1991 had been so devastating for the Iraqi population that the Gulf War became a notable example, even among representatives of the US military, against the aerial bombardment ofcritical national infrastructure. In August 2010, Rauf Bey, a second floating power plant with a 179megawatt generation capacity arrived in Basra, offering electricity to about one million people in and around the AlZubair district and bridging shortages. In this context, the floating power plants upheld a mission to remodernise the country; they stayed inIraq for five years, departing in 2015 astheIslamic State (ISIS) claimed politicalcontrol.Yet from Karpowerships perspective, Ayegl Sultans presence in Ghanas Tema fishing harbour in December 2015 marks a turning point in the companys growth and development, signalling their entry into the energyhungry African market. Ayegl Sultans arrival in Ghana also corresponds to a specific moment in Turkeys opening toAfrica, as AKP (the Justice and Development Party, founded by Recep Tayyip Erdoan and in power since 2002) government representatives shifted strategy from opening to partnership, or almdan ortakla. The Turkish government has continuously expanded its presence in Africa since 2002, now counting embassies and consulates in 44 countries on the continent, but foreign investment in Africa has been accelerating since 2015. Asitsaccession to the European Union hasstalled, Turkey has been diversifying awayfrom the Arab world and attempting toinfluence Africas sizeable Muslim population. In his address at the Dakar International Conference Centre in March 2018, Erdoan emphasised: Depleting Africas resources and adopting a modern colonial system is not our style.At the top level of these floating power plants, scrubber towers filter out sulphur from waste gases, which are exhausted through a series of slender chimneysCredit:NABIL MOUNZER / EPAEFE / ShutterstockThe antiwestern propaganda of President Erdoan has found supporters in Africa. Inaddressing African audiences, Erdoan resorts to invoking Turkeys Ottoman roots, telling his listeners that the Ottomans never colonised Africa or enslaved its peoples, criticising the development strategies implemented across the continent by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and theWorld Bank, and seeking to offer an alternative to EuroAmerican networks. Indoing so, he is practising what historian Aye avdar has labelled imperialism byantiimperialists. Turkish investment inGhanas energy sector followed closely behind the arrival of services provided by Turkish Airlines, which has direct flights and cargo services from Istanbul to more than 50 cities across the African continent.The arrival of Karpowerships ship in Tema also coincided with dumsor, the namegivento Ghanas extensive electricity crisisbetween 2012 and 2015, which means offand on in Twi. Dumsor impacted all areas of life in Ghana. Newspapers reported onthe buzzing sound of generators that nowcharacterise Accras central neighbourhoods, a stopgap measure thatwas affordable to only a select few. According to the Ghana Employers Association, about 13,000 people lost their jobs. Businesses collapsed. The uncertainty surrounding power availability also deterred foreign investors. Power outages resulted in limited access to essential services such as healthcare, education and communication. Sparking political unrest and demonstrations against the incumbent National Democratic Congress government, the electricity crisis earned Ghanas thenpresident John Mahama the nickname Mr Dumsor. Publicised widely in major media outlets worldwide, the crisis jeopardised Ghanas newfound position as alowermiddleincome country. In response, Ghanaian decisionmakers saw a further expansion and diversification of the countrys energy portfolio as a potential solution to the crisis. The Electricity Company of Ghana, the sole electricity distributor servicing the south of the country, signed 43 power purchase agreements withdifferent vendors, thelargest of those being Karpowership.Some of the Ayegl Sultan crew members who had previously worked inIraq had been eager to leave wartorn Basra, where they had minimal independence and mobility due to mounting security concerns, and looked forward to living in Tema instead. The move also precipitated the Turkish companys expansion into Zambia, Sierra Leone, Mozambique and Gambia, among other countries. In South Africa, Karpowerships project encountered concerns and criticism, mainly due to the high costs associated with the proposed 20year contracts. Critics also pointed to the lack of transparency in the tendering process and underlined how, given its financial footprint, working with Karpowership for 20 years would defer thearrival of renewable energy power stations into the country. Such criticism hashad little impact on the companys projects worldwide. Most recently, newsagencies have announced that Karpowership will provide electricity toSyria, contributing tothe countrys postconflict reconstruction efforts.Electricity is transmitted to the local grid via cables. AboardKarpowerships AyeglSultan, the crew has views over the fishing harbour of Tema and the industrial area that stretches to the horizon the rational urban plan designed by ConstantinosDoxiadis cannot be seen from thisdistanceCredit:Gke GnelKarpowership representatives present their ships as provisional systems whose eventual demise will spawn postfossilfuel modernisation. The formal qualities of the floating power plants serve as evidence ofsuch a possibility: since their only connection to the land is through transmission cables, power ships seem aless permanent infrastructure than landbased plants, as they can leave at any time, especially if and when their presence in lessee countries no longer makes financial or political sense. However, as the South African critics underlined, contracts often lead to relationships prioritising longer terms of attachment to national grids. Electricity producers have been financially and politically invested in prolonging such provisional periods as far into the future aspossible, absorbing the lessee countrys resources and delaying the arrival of an agebeyond their obsolescence. In this sense, temporary power structures have constituted technologies of deferral.It is helpful to remember that such distributed infrastructures have emerged worldwide because of deregulation and privatisation, increasing infrastructural demand, and the many disruptions causedby wars and related emergencies. Extensions to power grids are the deliberate product of various layers ofimperial power and careful planning amongmultiple international partners. Asinfrastructural spaces, they constitute pillars of what Keller Easterling labels extrastatecraft, pursuing government interests by relying on entities beyond thestate. Despite offering temporary relief,such extensions do not facilitate theproduction of selfsustaining infrastructures; instead, they deepen andextend geopolitical hierarchies anddependencies globally.2025-02-27Kristina RapackiShare AR February 2025ExtensionsBuy Now