First Gen’s Avion unit going off line due to damage in gas turbine

LOPEZ-LED First Gen Corp. told the local bourse on Tuesday that the second unit of its 97-megawatt (MW) Avion gas-fired plant will be offline for the time being due to damage found in its gas turbine.

Its subsidiary Prime Meridian PowerGen Corp. (PMPC) informed the listed power firm that one of the compressors of Avion Unit 2’s gas turbine was discovered in a routine inspection to have been damaged.

The Batangas-based Avion plant, which uses dual fuel aero-derivative gas turbines developed by General Electric (GE), is one of the gas facilities that source fuel from the offshore Malampaya gas field.

“The damage to Avion Unit 2, which has a capacity of approximately 48.5 MW, was found during an ongoing routine inspection. After carefully reviewing the findings, GE has advised PMPC that Avion Unit 2 cannot be operated and will require further offsite assessment at a GE service depot abroad to determine the extent of the damage and effect repairs necessary to place the gas turbine back into service,” First Gen said.

It added that Avion Unit 1 is unaffected, indicating that it will stay online.

First Gen earlier said that some 50 MW from Avion, which can operate on either natural gas or diesel, will be available for the Luzon grid during the Malampaya gas-topower project’s temporary closure from Oct. 2 to 22. It will be operating on liquid fuel during the gas field’s shutdown.

In a separate filing on Tuesday, the company said that it had received the tender offer report from Philippines Clean Energy Holding Inc. (PCEHI), which plans to acquire by way of a secondary sale a minimum of issued and outstanding common shares representing 3%, and a maximum of 5.7% from the Lopez firm’s existing shareholders.

The shares will be priced at P33 per common share.

“The tender offer provides existing shareholders of the company the opportunity to sell their common shares and realize their investment, in cash, at a premium to the current trading price of the common shares,” the report read.

The tender offer will begin at 9:00 a.m. on Sept. 1 and end at 12:00 noon of Sept. 29. The offer period may be extended as long as it gets prior approval from the corporate regulator.

In another disclosure, First Gen requested for a oneday extension of its trading suspension, after receiving PCEHI’s 59-page tender offer in order to “give the company’s shareholders equal access to the said report.”

First Gen has 3,495 MW of installed capacity in its portfolio, which comprises of projects in natural gas, geothermal energy from steam, hydro-electric, wind, and solar power. The listed power firm is a subsidiary of First Philippine Holdings Corp. —