The consortium of the Malampaya deep water-to-gas project has refuted the claims made by San Miguel Global Power unit South Premier Power Corp. (SPPC) that it is refusing to supply banked gas to the 1,200-megawatt (MW) Ilijan power plant in Batangas.
The consortium composed of the Philippine National Oil Company-Oil Exploration (PNOC EC), UC38, and Prime Energy said “there is no live contract for the supply of gas from Malampaya between SPPC and Shell Philippines Exploration BV (SPEX), now Prime Energy.”
“It will be noted that the Ilijan gas sale purchase agreement (GSPA) ended in June 2022 when after more than 20 years of supply from Malampaya the GSPA expired in accordance with its terms. Without a live contract, Malampaya gas cannot be sold legally to SPPC,” it added.
SMC earlier this month issued a statement saying the Ilijan facility is on extended outage following the refusal of SPEX to supply the 70 petajoules in banked gas from Malampaya, which SPPC acquired from PNOC in June 2022.
Meanwhile, SMC said it is conducting repair works on the power plant to improve its fuel efficiency and generation ramp rate.
The Malampaya consortium said there is no such thing as bank gas stored that belongs to SPPC or anyone else.
“The consortium parties, which include government agencies, are diligently applying the terms of the contract and ensuring that all that can be done, within the terms of the contracts in place, is done to produce gas and support power generation,” the consortium said.
According to the consortium, supply for the Ilijan power plant is under consideration as additional gas volume is extracted, if possible, following the extension of SC 38’s license.
