Ayala eyes power plant contracts

Manila Standard Today

By Alena Mae S. Flores | Posted on September 03, 2012 | 12:01am |  

The Ayala Group has expressed interest in the privatization of the contracted capacities of the 640-megawatt Unified Leyte geothermal plant and 150-MW Casecnan hydropower plant slated in the fourth quarter.

“For the power sector, we’re looking at the next round of bidding, I understand that the next one in the block is the Casecnan and Unified Leyte. Those are two things we are studying whether we will participate in,” Ayala Corp. managing director Eric Francia told reporters.

Francia said the Ayala Group has not made any decisions yet on who to partner with for the Casecnan and Unified Leyte privatization.

“We haven’t decided yet. For now, we don’t have any decisions on partners for those two bidding,” he said.

Ayala Corp. teamed up with Trans-Asia Oil and Energy Development Corp. to form ACTA Power Corp. which offered a bid for the four power barges of state-owned National Power Corp. that will be transferred to Mindanao.

ACTA Power, however, was the lone bidder during the May 16 bidding, prompting the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. to declare the bidding as a failure.

PSALM conducted the bidding for the barges again in August but the Ayala Group did not pursue its bid.

Francia said the company wanted to “prioritize” its business ventures.

“We have a lot of projects in the pipeline [and] the economics are becoming tight,” Francia said.

PSALM earlier said it was moving forward with the Unified Leyte and Casecnan bidding shortly after the power barges were privatized.

The previous draft bidding rules state that the Unified Leyte capacity will be divided 60-40, which means the capacities will be bid out at 384 MW and 255 MW, respectively.    source