Mindanao coal contract up for bid

The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (PSALM) Corp. is set to auction off the government’s supply contract for the 210-megawatt (MW) Mindanao coal-fired plant.

The bid proceedings for the Mindanao coal will probably take place in December, PSALM president and CEO Emmanuel Ledesma Jr. said in an interview. “The auction would be on the IPPA (independent power producer administrator) contract.”

The bid will likely be patterned after that of the Mindanao I and II (also known as Mt. Apo 1 and 2) geothermal power plants that were auctioned off last September, he said.

Operated by private firm STEAG State Power Inc. (SPI), the Mindanao coal-fired plant is made up of two units, each with a generating capacity of 105 MW.

The power plant, located at the Phividec Industrial Estate in Villanueva, Misamis Oriental, is a major facility and accounts for about 20 percent of Mindanao’s total power supply.

SPI’s power plant is currently Mindanao’s biggest in terms of unit capacity. Since it started commercial operations in November 2006, the plant has delivered about a fifth of the island’s total electricity supply.

Among the energy firms and conglomerates that have expressed broad interest in the IPPA contract is the Aboitiz Group.

Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc president Erramon I. Aboitiz said that the company would consider all opportunities for acquiring power plants and supply contracts to boost the group’s power generation portfolio.

Among the assets the company said it wanted to pursue was the government’s contracted capacity with the 92-megawatt (MW) Mt. Apo geothermal plants in North Cotabato. However, only FDC Misamis Power (a unit of the Gotianun group’s Filinvest Development Corp.) and SMC Global Power Holdings Corp. participated in the auction, which FDC Misamis won.

It was PSALM’s first IPPA deal in Mindanao.