Stocks of Lopez firms suffer selldown

Lopez-led First Gen Corp. has shut down a unit of its 500-megawatt San Lorenzo natural gas-fired power plant in Batangas, in the process halving its capacity, after a fire broke out at one of its transformers early Tuesday morning.

Jitters over the shutdown caused a selldown on the company’s shares, which slid 7.85 percent to close at P20.55 each on the Philippine Stock Exchange. First Gen was the steepest decliner among companies included in the local stock barometer, which closed modestly higher yesterday.

Share prices of affiliates First Philippine Holdings and Lopez Holdings likewise tumbled by 2.7 percent and 1.6 percent.

The shutdown of one unit reduced by half the capacity being generated by the San Lorenzo facility to only 250 MW as of Tuesday.

In its disclosure to the PSE, First Gen explained that a fire was detected around 3:03 a.m. yesterday at the Unit 60 transformer of the San Lorenzo plant, which is operated by its wholly owned subsidiary FGP Corp. The incident, the company explained, immediately activated the power plant’s automatic transformer protection system, which isolated the power generation units to ensure that no damage was incurred.

“The fire was subsequently was put out at around 3:21 a.m. The incident is now being investigated. In the meantime, the subject transformer has become inoperative and has reduced the facility’s generating capacity,” it added.

First Gen, however, assured that the remaining unit of San Lorenzo continued to operate at 250 MW while the four units of the 1000-MW Santa Rita power plant, which is operated by its wholly owned subsidiary First Gas Power Corp., remained operational.

The outage barely made a dent on Luzon’s power supply as the grid still registered power supply reserves of 819 MW as of 6 a.m. yesterday.

Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla confirmed that they expected the San Lorenzo unit to be up and running anytime today.

Joseph Roxas, president of local stockbrokerage Eagle Equities Inc., said First Holdings’ steep decline was a knee-jerk reaction to the shutdown.  However, he said the market might have overreacted because it was just a transformer that was hit. First Holdings ended yesterday with a market capitalization of P75 billion.

Last March, Lopez unit Energy Development Corp. (EDC) was blamed partly by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB)for a landslide in its geothermal power facility in Kananga, Leyte, that left 14 dead and eight workers injured.

EDC, the country’s biggest producer of geothermal energy, also suffered a setback at its Bacon-Manito geothermal plants in Albay and Sorsogon. EDC resumed the commercial operations of the BacMan facilities on Feb. 25 this year, generating a total of 110 MW then. Only the BacMan I facility—which has two 55-MW power units both commissioned in 1993—had been fully rehabilitated.