Meralco’s Singapore gas facilities start contributing to parent profits

After years of lackluster financial performance, the gas-fired power assets of Manila Electric Company (Meralco) in Singapore already started bringing in considerable level of profitability to the Pangilinan-led conglomerate.

The company’s PacificLight facility, which is of two units at 400-megawatt capacity each, was able to log earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of 21.9 million Singaporean dollars in the first nine months of the year.

The company noted that the positive financial outcome had been at 184 percent climb compared to the same nine-month stretch last year.

The PacificLight generating units are sited in Jurong island in Singapore and they had been in commercial operations roughly four years already.

Meralco’s power generation subsidiary MGen holds an effective 28 percent equity in PacificLight; while majority stakeholder is Hong Kong-based First Pacific Ltd., which is also affiliated with the power utility firm.

The company indicated that the PacificLight power units “have been operating without any incident of forced outage with year-to-date availability at 98.68-percent for Unit 10 and 89.62percent for Unit 20.”

Meralco added that demand in its Singapore operations peaked in May this year, but has since “remained flat after a slight dip,” adding that overall demand has actually exceeded last year’s level.

While yield from Singapore operations is now turning on to a more favorable route, the company still faces struggle when it comes to its power plant developments in the Philippines.

Harder push is currently being given to its 1,200-megawatt Atimonan power project in Quezon province – since this is of bigger scale of baseload capacity and it will also be using ultra super critical boiler technology, the most advanced yet to be deployed for coal power plant developments in the Philippines.

Meralco PowerGen President Rogelio L. Singson said “the recent hikes in interest rates and the weakening of the peso had an adverse impact on the projects of MGen,” primarily stating that this will likely drive up overall project financing.

The planned facility can already proceed to construction phase once the company secures the elusive approval of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) on its power supply agreement.