DOE Steps Up Malampaya Contingency

Manila Bulletin

By MYRNA M. VELASCO

June 24, 2012, 2:38pm

MANILA, Philippines --- With recent events straining power supply in Luzon, the Department of Energy (DoE) indicated that it has been stepping up contingency plans for the shutdown of the Malampaya gas facility to avoid pushing the system to the limit which will then plunge the grid into rotating brownouts.

The gas production facility will be on shutdown from July 13 to 20; yet weeks prior to it, the supply situation in Luzon had already been at “critical level” due to confluence of factors ranging from preventive maintenance, forced outage and de-rated capacity of some power plants.

Energy Undersecretary Josefina Patricia Asirit said that most of the power plants on outage will be back on stream starting this week until July 11, hence, they are expecting the situation to improve during the one-week shutdown of the gas plant.

“Coordination meetings continue to be held as scheduled… we are checking options available to maximize capacity,” she stressed, noting that several plants are being monitored so their availability can be factored in to the contingency plan.

While the capacity of the generation facilities on scheduled maintenance can be easily assessed, the forced outages as well as the fuel constraints (such as the low steam availability at the Tiwi plant) are matters that the industry cannot forecast or addressed easily.

“Calaca (which encountered boiler tube leak) is expected to be back on-line (this week). Pagbilao is really on a planned maintenance and be back by July 11 and Malaya is on a scheduled fuel stocking schedule for Malampaya shutdown,” she pointed out.

According to Pagbilao plant operator TeaM Energy, the targeted return-to-service of the facility will be July 5 and will be gradually ramped up until the scheduled full load declaration by July 7.

Questions have so far been raised as to why the 600-megawatt Malaya thermal plant was not operated when the other plants were on preventive maintenance so it could have offset part of the capacity taken out from the grid.

If that was on-line last week, industry players have noted that the “yellow alert conditions” in the grid or the extremely thin reserves could have been avoided.

After all, the industry stakeholders opined that Malaya has been retained under State ownership to serve as “security capacity” so that when situations of low supply will occur, the government can immediately call on the plant’s operation.

Asirit explained that the Malaya plant is “already being readied for the Malampaya shutdown;” and that fuel deliveries are being managed well to ensure that “it will run at full load” during that period.    source