The Department of Energy said Friday it is preparing contingency measures for the maintenance shutdown of the Malampaya natural gas project in October that could have an impact on the power supply and rates.
Energy Undersecretary Emmanuel Juaneza said the agency was looking at alternative fuel sources to fuel power plants that would be affected by the Malampaya shutdown.
“The DOE actually has already looked into getting, you know, an alternative way of running those… especially the Ilijan plant and other gas plants that are capable of running on fuel other than the natural gas,” Juaneza said in virtual press event on power supply hosted by Melo Acuna.
Juaneza said the DOE wanted to keep the power plants using the Malampaya gas in northwest Palawan operational.
The Malampaya gas project, which supplies natural gas to power plants with a combined capacity of 3,200 megawatts, is expected to undergo maintenance shutdown from Oct. 2 to Oct. 22.
The DOE official said the agency was cognizant of the impact of the shutdown on power rates and was looking at how to mitigate it.
“The prediction that we have had when we talked about it, the consideration of cost was certainly on the table,” he said.
“Definitely, the cost impact is there and the strategy is to get all other plants firing on conventional fuel to be back online and our expectation come, to cover the gap of power inefficiency in the event the Oct Malampaya shutdown is carried out,” he said.
Juaneza said they were also looking at other power plants such as the Dinginin coal plant to provide power if needed.
“That’s why were also pushing for AS [ancillary services] because we’re looking at having the reserve during the time Malampaya scheduled outage,” he said.