By
Lenie Lectura - November 28, 2019
To further
allay fears of China’s interference in the Philippine power grid, the
National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) on Wednesday invited lawmakers to
inspect the grid operator’s facility.
NGCP President and
Chief Executive Officer Anthony L. Almeda suggested a visit by legislators
and an independent party to personally see how the power grid is managed and
operated.
“We are happy to
welcome our senators and congressmen, as well as an independent third party to visit
our facilities in order to dispel any security concerns that had been raised
these past few days,” Almeda said.
A few lawmakers had
visited the site a few years back. These include Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian in
August 2016, and Reps. Baby Arenas and Danilo Suarez in March
2017. Sometime in August 2017, Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi also
inspected the NGCP
facilities.
facilities.
Gatchalian
said recently that he was informed by the National Transmission Corp.
(TranCo) of the possibility that the power grid could be shut off remotely by
the Chinese government.
The State Grid Corp. of
China (SGCC) has a 40-percent stake in NGCP, which took over the
management and operation of the power grid since 2009. TransCo still owns the
assets.
But Almeda played down
the possibility of a remote shutdown by Chinese parties. “There is
nothing to be alarmed about the stake by the SGCC in NGCP as its
investment is limited only to being a technical adviser,” he said.
NGCP, he noted. is
60-percent controlled by Filipino companies: Monte Oro Grid Resources Corp. and
Calaca High Power Corp. with 30-percent shares each. As such, SGCC
has only three nominees who sit as members of the NGCP Board of
Directors representing the company and proportionate to its capital shares.
“SGCC serves only as
the technical adviser of the consortium, but the management and the control
of NGCP, including its Systems Operation, are exclusively exercised by
Filipinos,” Almeda pointed out.
He added that
the supervisory control and data acquisition (Scada), the system that
controls the grid, is operated only by authorized Filipino technical experts
of NGCP.
“By default, Scada is
disconnected from the Virtual Private Network; thus, remote users cannot
connect to Scada,” Almeda said, pointing out that “VPN access may only be
granted to the Filipino CEO [chief operating officer] in an emergency situation
and only after undergoing a secure and confidential approval process.”
Since NGCP commenced
its operations in 2009, the approval process for the VPN access has not been
invoked and no remote access has been granted.
Almeda noted that its
Systems Opera-tion (SO) Datacenter is equipped with biometric access controls
which allow only authorized NGCP personnel to enter, apart from the
Scada workstations and servers that have been secured by firewalls and layers
of authentication systems to block unauthorized access.
Almeda also said
that NGCP has not entered into other businesses, other than those
permitted under the Concession Agreement.
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