DOE drops EWC plant from ‘committed projects’ roll

Piqued by the lingering puzzle as to when its facility will really reach commercial commissioning, Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho L. Petilla has directed his department to temporarily drop the 600-megawatt Energy World Corporation (EWC), a project development of an Australian-led firm, from their roll of committed power projects.

“For now, EWC is out from our list (of committed projects),” the energy chief has grudgingly told reporters, as he recalled how many times the company had made commitments on when the plant will come on stream.

For the delivery of their gas turbines alone, Petilla noted that the Department of Energy (DOE) was promised every month as to the timeline of the equipment’s arrival at its project site.

“First, they said it was February this year, then March, then May, August and finally September, but my guess is: It arrived in October,” he stressed.

At this point, he noted that EWC has given word that their facility’s construction is being fast-tracked and they have been aiming to bring in new 200MW capacity to the Luzon grid next year.

“For now, they are still out in our list. We put them back when we see that they can finally deliver on their commitment,” Petilla said.

Beyond dilemmas on shipment of equipment, it was gathered that EWC also had to struggle with its financial closing because of the “merchant market set up” of power development in the restructured Philippine electricity sec- tor. Its third dilemma is on gas supply to fuel its prospective power plant.

In the list of committed power projects submitted to Congress last week, the EWC project was manifestly withdrawn from it – that the scuttlebuttdriven industry had been prompted on array of speculations.

Due to the critical power supply hitting Luzon grid next year, the energy department has been closely keeping an eye on the construction updates of power plants.

From the initially targeted 700MW of supply shoring up to Luzon grid prior to March next year, that list had been continually going down – until the DOE could only now promise for less than 300MW of new capacity addition. (MMV)