Ultra bilyonaryo Ramon S. Ang’s San Miguel Global Power (SMGP) hit back at the consortium behind the Malampaya deep water-to-gas project after refuting his claims on the refusal to supply banked gas to the 1,200-megawatt (MW) Ilijan power plant in Batangas.
ALSO READ: Malampaya consortium refutes SMC’s banked gas claim
Stopping short of saying that they are no liars, SMGP said in a statement that unit South Premier Power Corp. (SPPC) has a supply contract with the goverment over the highly-coveted Malampaya banked gas.
SMGP said that SPPC signed a gas supply and purchase agreement (GSPA) worth $1.2 billion with state-owned Philippine National Oil Company (PNOC) for banked gas on June 23, 2022.
It said this was under the direct supervision of the Department of Energy, the PNOC board, and the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel.
The government owns and exercises rights over 70.26 petajoules of banked gas through PNOC, according to SMGP.
“While SPPC does not have a direct agreement with the consortium, it is PNOC on behalf of government that has an existing contract with SPPC,” SMGP said.
“In fact, in our discussions for the sale of the banked gas, PNOC disclosed to SPPC that the government has fully paid the consortium for the gas, which means that 100 percent of the gas should be deliverable to SPPC,” the company added.
The Malampaya consortium composed of the Philippine National Oil Company-Oil Exploration (PNOC EC), UC38, and Prime Energy on Sunday refuted claims made by SMGP unit South Premier Power Corp. (SPPC) that it is refusing to supply banked gas to Ilijan.
The consortium said there is no refusal to sell to Ilijan because there is no legal means by which the sale of gas to the plant could be made as there is no live contract for the supply of gas from Malampaya between SPPC and Shell Philippines Exploration BV (SPEX), now Prime Energy.