Attarat Power Co (APCO), a Jordanian affiliate of Estonian-owned Enefit, last month said its plan to construct a $2.1 billion oil shale-fired power plant in Jordan had secured financing from a consortium of Chinese banks.

The 470-megawatt plant is now scheduled to begin generating electricity for local consumption in mid-2020, a company official told Reuters.

The move comes after the power utility last year signed initial agreements with Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China for $1.6 billion in debt financing. The debt financing will also be supported by state-run China Export and Credit Insurance, which acts as an underwriter.

The project was initially agreed in 2014, but it had faced

delays and discord over the price proposed to sell electricity from the plant and connect it to the national grid.

Spurred at the outset by high gas and fuel prices, the project was hit as cheaper oil in recent years led to delays in securing finance, an energy official said.

The consortium that owns the project is YTL Power

International Bhd of Malaysia and Yudean Group of China, which each hold a stake of 45 percent, with the remaining 10 percent owned by Enefit.

China’s Guangdong Power Engineering Corp was selected to lead the engineering, procurement, and construction of the plant under a turnkey contract.

The firm has reached a 30-year power purchase agreement with Jordan’s National Electric Power Company (NEPCO).

The plant is designed to utilize Jordan’s huge reserves of oil shale and help reduce the Kingdom’s reliance on imports of oil products for power generation.

It is expected to consume around 10 million tons of oil shale per year.