Business World Online
Posted on January 29, 2012 10:18:46 PM
ENERGY DEVELOPMENT Corp. (EDC) expects to complete rehabilitation work on its Bacon-Manito (BacMan) geothermal power plant by September, more than a year later than planned, an official said last week.
“For BacMan, the base case assumption is that the plant would run in September this year. We were hoping to get it running by July last year but we started running one unit last December and there are really some issues you will find in the unit after it hasn’t run in five to seven years,” EDC President and Chief Operating Officer Richard B. Tantoco told reporters in an interview.
He added the company is optimistic it will be able to put the geothermal plant back on line soon.
EDC won the bid for the operations of the power plant for $28.5 million in 2010. The company provides steam to the BacMan plant.
Rehabilitation work began in May 2010 right after EDC won the contract. It was originally planned to finish in as early as 18 months.
BacMan is located in Bacon, Sorsogon and Manito, Albay. The 110-MW (megawatt) BacMan I geothermal plants was commissioned in 1993 while the 40-MW BacMan II plants were commissioned in 1998.
It had a capacity of 150 MW. However, due to the damage to one of the units last year, only 130 MW can be restored.
Since last year, BacMan has been shut down.
EDC is also shutting down one of its other geothermal complexes consisting of the 305-MW Tongonan I geothermal power plant and the 192-MW Palinpinon geothermal plant in Leyte.
The company will rehabilitate two units of Palinpinon and two units of Tongonan.
“Four units of Palinpinon-Tongonan will go down. That’s scheduled until the end of March and June. We’re doing fairly significant work on those so we can finish within the year,” Mr. Tantoco said.
“The issue with Palinpinon, however, is the equipment is very old so we’re tearing down the entire cooling system and putting in brand new ones” he said.
EDC’s subsidiary Green Core Geothermal, Inc. won the bid to operate the power plant in 2009 for $220 million.
EDC posted a loss of P487.7 million in the nine-month period ending September 2011 from an income of P7.6 billion in the same period the year previous, latest financial statements show.
Aside from the BacMan geothermal power plant and the Tongonan I and Palinpinon plants in the Visayas, the Lopez-led firm also operates the 132-MW Pantabangan-Masiway hydroelectric facility in Nueva Ecija.
It also holds contracts to develop wind projects in Northern Luzon.
Shares of EDC closed at P6.30 on Friday, up 1.61% from its previous close of P6.20 apiece. -- Emilia Narni J. David
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