DUBAI (Bloomberg) -- A South Korean group led by Korea Power Electric Corp. won a $20 billion contract to build four nuclear plants in the United Arab Emirates, the second-biggest Arab economy.

Korea Power, a state-run utility that supplies almost all the power in South Korea, won the U.A.E.’s first overseas nuclear power plant order together with Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction Co., Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co., Samsung C&T Corp. and Westinghouse Electric Co., it said in a statement on Sunday.
“The KEPCO team is best equipped to fulfill the government’s partnership requirements in this ambitious program,” Khaldoon Khalifa al-Mubarak, chairman of Emirates Nuclear Energy Corp., said in a separate statement. “The nature of this project will require a partnership that endures for nearly 100 years.”
The U.A.E., the fourth-biggest producer among the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, is turning to nuclear power to meet growing electricity demand as the country’s infrastructure investments use up domestic natural-gas supplies. Power demand in the nation will double to 40,000 megawatts by 2020, Anwar Gargash, the minister of state for foreign affairs, said Nov. 16.
----------------First plant in 2017
Korean Electric will design, build and help operate four 1,400-megawatt civil nuclear power units that will be completed from 2017 to 2020, Emirates Nuclear said.
The South Koreans won after competing against a French group led by Electricite de France SA, Europe’s biggest power generator, and a consortium led by General Electric Co. The U.A.E. is continuing talks with other bidders on “potential cooperation in areas outside the scope” of the current contract, Emirates Nuclear said in its statement.
South Korea is also seeking to win 10 nuclear reactor orders from countries including Jordan, China and Turkey, according to Korea Electric’s statement.
The U.A.E. government has an atomic-energy agreement with the U.S., a necessary step to awarding construction contracts, and will prohibit the enrichment of uranium on U.A.E. soil. The civil nuclear agreement may create more than 10,000 jobs, while commercial opportunities could exceed $40 billion, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
William Travers, formerly a technical adviser at the International Atomic Energy Agency, is the first director- general of the country’s Federal Authority of Nuclear Regulation.
-----------------No nuclear weapons
By foregoing the development of domestic uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing capabilities, “the U.A.E. has made it impossible for any future U.A.E. nuclear sector to produce weapons-usable nuclear material,” according to a Web site produced by the U.A.E. embassy in Washington D.C.
The U.A.E.’s nuclear program may propel other Arab Persian Gulf states, including the world’s biggest oil producer, Saudi Arabia, to seek similar technology, a Chatham House report said on Nov. 10.
U.A.E. trade minister Sheikha Lubna al-Qasimi is deputy chairman of Emirates Nuclear Energy Corp.’s board. The chairman, Al-Mubarak, is also chief executive officer of Abu Dhabi-owned investment company Mubadala Development Co. PJSC.