Saturday, May 21, 2011

Rehab of assets acquired by Aboitiz on track, says official

By Donnabelle L. Gatdula (The Philippine Star) Updated May 21, 2011 12:00 AM 

MANILA, Philippines- The Aboitiz Group is on track in all its major rehabilitation programs for the acquired assets from the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM), a top company official said.
Aboitiz Power Corp. (APC) president and CEO Erramon Aboitiz said they expect the rehabilitation of the Ambuklao power plant to be completed in the third quarter this year as earlier announced.
He said they also expect more capacities to be generated from the Binga power facilities.
“For Ambuklao-Binga, we’re to report that we should be completing the Ambuklao rehabilitation by the third quarter of this year. In fact, one unit will be in full production by June, and the two other units will follow in July and August. We will have brought up the capacity of that plant from 75 megawatts to 105 megawatts,” he said.
The Ambuklao plant was heavily affected by the strong earthquake that hit Benguet in 1990 and had operated intermittently since 1990 until its final decommissioning in 1999.
SNAP-Benguet, a unit of APC, submitted the highest bid of $325 million for the acquisition of the Ambuklao plant and the 100- MW Binga hydroelectric power plant also located in Itogon, Benguet. 
SNAP-Benguet began a massive rehabilitation project in 2008 that would increase Ambuklao’s capacity to 105 MW and restore it to operating status. All three units are expected to be running by the third quarter of 2011.
“We also are going to be rehabilitating the Binga plants, we are going to take down one unit every year so that we don’t lose our production, and aside from rehabilitating the Binga we will increase its capacity from 100 MW to 120 MW.”
For the Tiwi-Makban geothermal power plants, he said they would continue to study how to increase capacity.
“For Tiwi-Makban, it is definitely a lot less from what was originally planned when it is still at the hands of previous owners. But we are focused on rehab program to get more from its existing capacities,” he said.
The company earlier said it was set to spend a total of around $280 million for the rehab programs for the Ambuklao-Binga hydroelectric power plants.

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