Danessa Rivera (The Philippine Star)
- September 20, 2019 - 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — State-run Power
Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) declared a failed
bidding for the sale of the 650-megawatt (MW) Malaya Thermal Power Plant (TPP)
after only one bidder submitted an offer.
“Unfortunately, PSALM was
constrained to declare a failure of bidding during the public bidding held for
the Malaya plant,” PSALM president and chief executive officer Irene Joy
Besido-Garcia said in a text message.
Only one company submitted an offer
in the opening of bids.
“Under the PSALM bidding procedures,
if only one bid is received by PSALM by the bid submission deadline, then there
will be a failure of bidding,” Besido-Garcia said.
“There were actually four qualified
bidders for Malaya, but only AC Energy Inc. submitted a bid,” she said.
PSALM is now preparing to rebid the
asset by asking the go signal from its board.
“We will immediately prepare for the
second round of bidding as soon as we submit the matter to the PSALM board,”
Besido-Garcia said.
The sale of the Malaya TPP has been
delayed for two years. It was originally scheduled for privatization in March
2017 but has been deferred many times after the Department of Energy (DOE)
proposed to convert it into a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant.
The plant, which currently runs on
diesel, was designated as a must-run unit (MRU) to address supply deficiency
when operating power plants in the grid suddenly bog down or become
unavailable.
It will operate as an MRU until the
DOE finalizes its privatization schedule.
After changing the terms of
reference, PSALM then set the sale of the power asset in December 2018, but the
PSALM board decided to push back the privatization anew since there is no basis
for a base price yet.
PSALM engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers
(PwC) Philippines to do the valuation of the Malaya TPP and its underlying land
after two failed public biddings and four failed negotiated procurements.
Located in Pililia, Rizal, the
Malaya TPP consists of a 300-MW unit with a once-through type boiler and a
350-MW unit fitted with a conventional boiler.
It was last rehabilitated in 1995 by
Korea Electric Power Corp. under a 15-year rehabilitate-operate-manage-maintain
agreement.
No comments:
Post a Comment