DoE prepares to award 70 contracts, revoke 53

The Department of Energy is preparing to award around 70 new renewable energy contracts within the month, while it is completing its evaluation of 53 contracts that may be revoked by month’s end.

Energy Utilization and Management Bureau director Mario Marasigan said the 70 RE contracts that the DoE was preparing would not be for auction, but would be opened for negotiations with qualified parties.

Contract awards would be done upon completion of negotiations, he said.

“We won’t be doing any mass signing of contracts. We’ll sign contracts as we go. We hope to complete everything within the month,” he told reporters.

As with the first contracting round for RE projects last year, the bulk of the contracts being prepared were for hydropower projects, he said. The contracts to be awarded would also cover some privatized assets, as well as projects in green and frontier areas.

The DoE over six months last year awarded more than 200 contracts for the development of RE projects all over the country.

While preparing for this new round of negotiations, he related that the DoE was also conducting a final review of 53 contracts that could be revoked by the end of the month.

The DoE earlier in the year sent show-cause letters to holders of 53 RE contracts that were deemed remiss in their compliance with requirements and work program commitments.

Of these 53 contracts, he said one had already been revoked: that for a proposed biomass project in Palawan spearheaded by a Korean firm. A termination letter was recently sent to the contract holder.

Two hydropower contracts, assigned to different proponents, were also in danger of revocation, he said.

For the other 50 contracts, he said the DoE was still doing ground validation and processing submissions of some reportorial requirements.

The final verdict on these contracts would be handed down by month’s end.