Friday, July 23, 2010

Petron to push through with Limay plant project

MANILA, Philippines - Petron Corp. is still keen on building a 70-megawatt power plant within its refinery in Limay, Bataan, but has pushed back the target completion date of the facility.

"We still plan to have the 70 MW to be located beside our refinery," Eric Recto, president of the country's largest oil refiner, said.

Recto noted that construction of the plant will end by the third quarter of 2012 instead of the earlier announced target of first quarter the same year.

In line with the company's cost efficiency program, the plant will supply 35 to 40 MW of the power requirement of Petron's refining facility, and the excess capacity will be sold to the grid.

Petron is expecting to save P1 billion per year on energy costs once the power plant becomes operational.

The company recently raised P10 billion from the issuance of 100 million perpetual preferred shares to partly finance the construction of the P5-billion Limay plant.

The plant is part of synergies forged with diversified conglomerate San Miguel Corp., which now owns majority of Petron.

San Miguel, through power generation arm San Miguel Energy Corp., has the largest capacity portfolio to include the 620-MW Limay Combined Cycle Power Plant, and the contracted energy output of the 1,000-MW Sual coal-fired power plant, 345-MW San Roque multi-purpose hydro plant and the 1,294 MW Ilijan natural gas power plant.

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