The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (PSALM) Corporation today (26 August 2009) successfully conducted the negotiated sale of the 620-megawatt (MW) Limay Combined Cycle Power Plant, with San Miguel Energy Corporation (SMEC) having exceeded the government’s reserve price for the plant.
SMEC offered USD13.5 million (USD13,502,000.00) for the Bataan-based plant.
PSALM will declare SMEC, the energy investment arm of food and beverage conglomerate San Miguel Corporation, as the winning bidder as soon as the accuracy, authenticity, and completeness of all the submitted bid documents are checked and verified by the PSALM Board.
The successful negotiated sale was the fourth attempt of PSALM to privatize the Limay plant. The power facility remained unsold after public bidding in July 2008 and January 2009 and negotiations held in March 2009, primarily due to lack of interest from investors.
Commissioned in 1993, the Limay power plant comprises two 310-MW modules, Blocks A and B, which consist of three 70-MW gas turbines and a 100-MW steam turbine, respectively. Located in Limay, Bataan in Central Luzon, or approximately 145 kilometers west of Manila, the plant is designed to meet the base-load demand of the Luzon grid.
Although it has breached the 70% targeted privatization level for generating assets in the Luzon and Visayas grids ― one of the preconditions to the declaration of open access and retail competition (OARC) ― with the sale of the 600-MW Batangas (or Calaca) Coal-Fired Thermal Power Plant last July, PSALM continues to earnestly pursue the government’s power asset sale program, which is its primary mandate as specified in the Electric Power Industry Reform Act.
PSALM also hopes to accelerate fulfilling the remaining precondition to the OARC declaration — the sale of at least 70% of the total contracted capacities of the National Power Corporation in the Luzon and Visayas grids to independent power producer administrators — starting with the rebidding of the 1,000-MW contracted capacity of the Sual power plant in Pangasinan, and the 700-MW contracted capacity of the Pagbilao plant in Quezon Province on Friday, 28 August 2009.
