Geothermal Cross-Currency Debt Director

The mandate

The project’s senior debt amortises in hard currency, while tariff receipts increasingly arrive in Turkish lira under an indexation mechanism that only partly and belatedly reflects exchange movement. Reservoir decline and reinjection needs now require capital that original lender cases treated as discretionary, and a hedge rolled at shorter tenor than the debt. Debt-service cover still appears adequate in the base model, but cash sweeps, reserve replenishment and field expenditure collide under plausible currency and generation conditions. Sponsors need a lender-ready reconfiguration grounded in plant physics.

The deliverables are a source-model reconciliation, debt-and-hedge exposure map, reservoir-capex funding case, reconfiguration option book, lender information memorandum, term-sheet evaluation and executable implementation roadmap. Options may include amortisation reshaping, reserve treatment, covenant rebasing, local-currency tranches, hedge resizing, sponsor support and defined cash-sweep changes. Each must show tariff mechanics, generation, parasitic load, availability, steam-field uncertainty, tax, currency, interest and termination economics rather than solving cover ratios through unsupported production.

Five milestones govern seven months: week five accepts the integrated operating and finance baseline; week eleven approves downside and reverse-stress cases; week eighteen accepts a short list of lender-testable structures; week twenty-four records lender feedback and negotiated boundary positions; and week thirty delivers the final reconfiguration package, conditions and implementation sequence. Billing follows those five milestones and no option proceeds in the model without identified approvals and documentary dependencies.

Acceptance requires reservoir and plant specialists to reconcile production and reinvestment assumptions, treasury to reproduce debt and hedge cash flows, tax and accounting owners to identify unresolved treatments, and sponsor representatives to approve support boundaries. At least two financing options must survive agreed currency, generation and hedge-break stresses while preserving safe operating expenditure. The steering committee returns a single annotated variance schedule within nine working days of each milestone.

The client provides loan and security documents, tariffs, generation histories, reservoir studies, capex plans, hedge confirmations, cash accounts, tax and accounting advice, lender correspondence and authorised model access. The consultant does not provide reservoir opinions, negotiate as borrower without mandate, arrange financing, execute hedges, approve sponsor support, issue legal or tax conclusions, alter plant plans or communicate projections externally.

Why this is external work

Project finance owns the lender model, operations owns steam-field evidence and treasury sees current hedge and currency pressure, but none can independently reset the assumptions each function previously defended. Lenders will also evaluate structures through their own exposure and capital limits. External project-debt expertise can create an integrated, challengeable case without earning from arranged financing or overstating plant output.

What you will own

• Reconcile tariff receipts, generation, operating cost, reservoir expenditure, tax, hedge settlements, reserves and debt service from source evidence.
• Map currency and interest exposure by debt period, tariff reset, cash location, hedge maturity, collateral and termination value.
• Build operating downside and reverse stresses combining steam decline, reinjection delay, outages, lira movement and refinancing constraints.
• Compare amortisation, covenant, reserve, local-currency, hedge, cash-sweep and sponsor-support options on executable terms.
• Prepare lender materials that distinguish verified performance, specialist opinion, management case, contingency and unresolved dependency.
• Evaluate lender feedback and term sheets for pricing, control, security, cash lock-up, cure, prepayment and implementation consequence.
• Deliver the agreed debt configuration, negotiation boundaries, approval map, closing workplan and residual-risk register.

Candidate qualifications

• Has restructured or refinanced operational renewable-energy project debt involving material currency mismatch and lender coordination.
• Understands geothermal generation, reservoir reinvestment, tariff indexation, project covenants, reserve accounts and cash sweeps.
• Can model debt, hedges, tax and operating cash without substituting finance assumptions for technical evidence.
• Has converted independent-engineer and reservoir findings into lender cases while preserving specialist opinion ownership.
• Brings direct experience negotiating amortisation, covenant, reserve, local-currency or sponsor-support structures under stress.
• Is independent of arranging banks, hedge providers and success-fee advisers and can disclose all lender relationships.

Non-negotiables

• Can work onsite in Istanbul and attend monthly field and lender diligence weeks throughout the engagement.
• Brings completed project-debt reconfiguration with renewable operating assets; generic corporate refinancing is insufficient.
• Will not inflate generation, suppress reinvestment or represent unapproved sponsor support as committed funding.
• Will disclose relationships with lenders, hedge banks, technical advisers, sponsors and potential financing providers before appointment.

1. 49 words maximum. Which geothermal operating assumption would you refuse to infer from a finance model alone?
2. 49 words maximum. How would you test whether tariff indexation genuinely protects hard-currency debt service?
3. 49 words maximum. What lender concession becomes dangerous if reservoir reinvestment remains treated as discretionary?