Leyte board to hear proposed power project

THE Leyte Provincial Board will conduct a public hearing on Monday on the proposed Leyte-Mindanao Interconnection Project (LMIP).

The conduct of the hearing came after National Association of Electricity Consumers for Reforms (Nasecore) Inc. president Pete Ilagan manifested and appealed for the issuance of a resolution to interpose in the proposed power project.

Board Member Anlie Apostol, chairman committee on energy, said they are going to hold the hearing to determine firsthand the rationality behind Nasecore’s objection on the project.

Ilagan claimed that cost of the project will be passed on to the consumers though a feasibility study has yet to be conducted by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).

The Department of Energy (DOE) believed that the interconnection project could secure the country’s power supply as a long-term solution to alleviate the power shortages in the country.

Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras in a statement posted at the DOE website, disclosed that a Japanese firm has expressed interest in constructing the LMIP, which is estimated to cost P18 billion.

It was learned that the project involves a 250-kilovolt high-voltage density cable bipolar link with a total transfer capacity of 500 megawatts (MW), and a 455-kilometer long overhead line and 23 kilometer submarine cable.

The said project would start at the Ormoc Converter Station in Leyte and would end at the Kirahon Converter station in North Central Mindanao via Southern Leyte and North Eastern Mindanao.

No less than Secretary Almendras said the feasibility study is necessary to determine whether it will be in the best interest of the grid and consumers to construct the LMIP, which may entail additional costs for consumers.

Apostol stressed they will invite the province’s local chief executives, representatives from the NGCP, DOE, distribution utilities and other sectors to gather, if not to reconcile, their perspectives on the project.

“What would be the major effect if we pursue the program? We will weigh things for the best interest of the people in Leyte,” Apostol said.

She, however, expressed that the project would again give the province another burden in its power shortages.

“We are the one who is supplying electricity to Cebu and then we will be giving Mindanao. We might again be placed in a situation that instead of us selling the electricity, we are the one buying it for Mindanao,” Apostol pointed out.(Leyte Samar Daily Express)