Tokyo Electric seen to keep investments in Philippine power sector

MANILA, Philippines—Tokyo Electric Power Corp. (Tepco) will not sell its energy investments in the Philippines despite the difficulties it is facing with its Fukushima nuclear power plant in the aftermath of the devastating tsunami and earthquake that rocked Japan last March.

In fact, Tepco is even planning to put up in the Philippines greenfield power plants that can generate at least 600 megawatts for the Luzon grid, through local firm Team Energy, which it owns together with another Japanese firm, Marubeni.

Expansion of the two coal-fired power plants owned and operated by Team Energy in Sual, Pangasinan, and in Pagbilao, Quezon, is also being pushed within the short to medium term.

Team Energy president and CEO Federico Puno disclosed these plans as he dismissed as “speculation” earlier news reports claiming that Tepco would sell all of its overseas energy investments.

Puno explained that Tepco, which has a total generating capacity of 65,000 MW in Japan and only 8,500 MW abroad, was not about to make any drastic moves to divest assets as the Japanese firm was still in the process of constituting an appraisal group to evaluate its assets, operation, earning capacity and potential costs.

In the meantime, Tepco also continues to concentrate all efforts to bring the Daiichi nuclear power facility plant to a “controlled shutdown.” The target was to restart the water circulation within the facility to control the buildup of heat.

By December, a complete, cold shutdown of Fukushima is being targeted. Tepco is likewise working with the affected people to determine and process compensation claims, Puno added.

Meanwhile, in the Philippines, Team Energy is scouting for potential sites for either a coal- or liquefied natural gas-fired power plant. Among the areas being considered are Cavite and Bataan as these provinces have the necessary infrastructure to put up a power plant as well as the presence of industrial estates.

Should Team Energy pursue an LNG facility, the host power plant must have a generating capacity of about 1,000 MW to justify the economics of the project. An LNG facility can be feasible for Team Energy since Marubeni has access to natural gas supply, according to Puno.

Puno added that Team Energy submitted a proposal for a joint venture on a planned power facility to Manila Electric Co., the country’s biggest power distributor. But it has yet to receive a response from the distribution utility.

Team Energy, Puno said, was confident that there was still space for its greenfield facilities even with its planned expansions in Sual and Pagbilao and even as several new power facilities start commercial operations within the next four to five years

“We just have to look at the timing of the capacities coming in. Right now, you’re looking at GNPower possibly coming online by 2013. Then you have Redondo Peninsula’s 600-MW starting operations by 2015. There’s also the expansion of the Calaca coal plant in Batangas and a possible expansion of the Masinloc facility by AES,” Puno explained.

Team Energy’s own expansions will see the addition of about 1,000 MW in generating capacity, of which 600 MW may come from the construction of new facilities in the Sual coal plant and the other 400 MW from the Pagbilao expansion.