AMID interests from at least two power-generating companies to expand one of the country’s natural gas-fired power plants or put up an additional natural gas power facility in Batangas, the government remains undecided over what to do with the San Pascual power purchase agreement (PPA), Energy Secretary Raphael P.M. Lotilla told BusinessMirror on Saturday.

The expansion of the Ilijan of Korea Electric Power Corp. (Kepco) and the proposed 550-megawatt (MW) San Gabriel natural gas-fired power plant of First Gen Corp. remains tied to the San Pascual power purchase agreement. Thus the fate of these projects rests on whether they will be attached to the San Pascual deal.

“But we still need to make certain additional supply of gas for the two projects,” Lotilla said in a phone interview.

A source, privy to the San Pascual deal, said that expanding the Ilijan or putting up additional capacity through the San Gabriel project will cover the power requirements of Luzon come 2010 and 2011.

The source added it could take about two years to put up two gas turbines and a steam turbine for a 300-MW natural gas-fired plant. 

Kepco and First Gen earlier submitted their respective proposals to the government. They are vying to undertake the development of additional capacities to secure the energy needs of Luzon for 2010 and 2011—a period deemed critical by energy authorities.            

Even TeaM Energy Corp., formerly Mirant Philippines, is willing to discuss with the current operators for the natural gas-fired plant a possible partnership to expand or develop additional generating capacity.

There are now 2,700 MW of power from three power plants in the country. They are the 1,000-MW Santa Rita, the 500-MW San Lorenzo plant of First Gen and the 1,271-MW Ilijan Kepco.

San Pascual was supposed to fill the remaining 300 Ms, that would have been powered by the 3,000-MW Malampaya deep-water gas plant.

The construction of San Pascual did not push through owing to excess capacity at  that time; however, proponents of San Pascual then signed a power purchase agreement with the National Power Corp. (Napocor) for the offtake of the plant’s output.

The government has been working out the pretermination of the contract of San Pascual with US-based Edison Mission Energy since September 2002.               

“As we are still number crunching with respect to the San Pascual power purchase agreement, using the bunk gas or the remaining 300-MW from the Malampaya deepwater gas-to-power project are among the options we are looking at,” Lotilla said.

HONG KONG—The Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) group is veering away from traditional retail voice services and is now aggressively growing an international mobile business by tapping overseas Filipino workers, or OFWs,

Basic Energy needs P1.5B for development

PUBLICLY traded Basic Energy Corp. is borrowing P1.3 to P1.5 billion to help fund the ethanol development project of newly acquired unit Zambo Norte BioEnergy Corp.

INFORMATION technology icon IBM said it will still keep a big part of its global business initiative focused on small-and-medium-sized businesses (SMBs), where the company has made substantial gains over the past few years.

AMID interests from at least two power-generating companies to expand one of the country’s natural gas-fired power plants or put up an additional natural gas power facility in Batangas, the government remains undecided over what to do with the San Pascual power purchase agreement (PPA), Energy Secretary Raphael P.M. Lotilla told BusinessMirror on Saturday.

Philippine stocks rose Friday, posting a second week of gains, after the central bank cut a key interest rate and higher sales at US retailers eased concern a housing slump will curb spending in the world’s biggest economy.

While other real-estate companies such as MegaWorld Corp. are increasingly going into joint ventures (read: somebody provides the land and the real-estate company develops the land), Ortigas & Co. Ltd. Partnership (OCLP) prefers to go it alone because of its huge land bank.