Sunstar Bacolod
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
THE Central Negros Electric Cooperative (Ceneco) disputes the claim of Manta Energy Inc. that it has a power supply contract with the electric company.
Ceneco general manager Sulpicio Lagarde Jr. said Ceneco was compelled to issue a clarification because of an apparently all out and expensive media campaign of Manta to force Ceneco to accept a 22 megawatts (MW) power supply contract that Manta officials claimed Ceneco signed on 17 March 2009 with Manta under its previous name IN2Power.
Lagarde disclosed that the claimed contract was never evaluated and deliberated upon by the Ceneco Board of Directors, although one document bore the signature of then Ceneco president Vicente Sabornay.
Sabornay claimed that he signed the document because he thought the contract was deliberated upon as scheduled on 17 March 2009. This was manifested during the Ceneco board meeting in Bacolod City on October 26, 2010.
The Kepco Salcon officials were duly advised by the Ceneco Board of the rejection of the contract under Board Resolution No. 9221.
Lagarde said the Ceneco Board even passed a resolution on November 9, 2010 confirming the decision not to enter into the 22 MW additional contract with IN2Power, which turned out to be just a broker and would buy the power from the same Kepco plant in Cebu with which Ceneco already has a 40 MW power supply contract.
“It must be understood by our member consumers and the local government officials that Ceneco needs to diversify its power supply to assure reliability,” Lagarde stressed.
“Negros is an island,” he added. “Buying power mainly from Cebu and Leyte has been causing brownouts whenever there is a problem in high voltage between Cebu and Negros. For reliability we need to buy power from Panay Island and from Negros Island,” he explained.
He added that Ceneco has no objection in sourcing power from Negros-based Green Core geothermal or other Negros island based power generators. However, Ceneco had a pricing formula dispute on its own proposed contract with Green Core, Lagarde pointed out.
“We nonetheless encouraged our associates in the Negros Power Aggregation Group or NPSAG to buy from Green Core. Negros-produced power supplied to the Negros island grid will contribute to reliability of Negros as a whole,” he said.
Lagarde also lamented that some Manta officials are trying to manipulate Ceneco into accepting a rejected contract by filing an application with the ERC.
“We consider the act to be in bad faith because Ceneco has no contract with IN2Power or its new name Manta,” Lagarde said.
Published in the Sun.Star Bacolod newspaper on April 27, 2011.
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