Metro Pacific Investments Corp. said it received offers for its stake in a large natural gas-fired power plant in Jurong Island, Singapore.
MPIC chief finance officer David Nicol said the group received several offers for possible merger and structural solutions to reduce the current excess power capacity in Singapore. The group has a majority stake in a two 400-megawatt gas-fired power plant in Jurong.
“There is a lot of surplus capacity in Singapore market as of the moment. The Singapore government with good reason encouraged lots of investments in power generation and the private sector responded. Now there is so much that prices are difficult. It is has to see anybody making making money, and so there are talks of combining to try reduce the surplus capacity,” Nicol said.
“We might [accept] merger, but we have received so many offers and we have not made a choice,” he said.
Nicol said the power generation industry in Singapore needed a structural solution to retire capacity. First Pacific Investments Corp., the parent company of MPIC, and Meralco PowerGen Corp., the power generation arm of Manila Electric Co., acquired 70 percent of GMR Energy (Singapore) Pte Ltd., a company building a power plant located on Jurong Island from GMR Infrastructure for $488 million in cash in 2013, with a further committed $49-million equity contribution into the project.
The project was the first built in Singapore since the Keppel Merlimau Plant in 2007 and among the most efficient combined cycle power plants built in Singapore.