This assurance was made by Philippine Electricity Market Corp. (PEMC) president Lasse Holopainen who had earlier hinted of a possible shutdown of WESM while the Malampaya project’s maintenance is ongoing.
"We will keep the market running," Holopainen said, noting that PEMC "will just be extra vigilant to ensure that the Malampaya incident would not in anyway affect the WESM operation."
"The system operator and market operator of WESM have consolidated their efforts. We hope we can still generate enough power so as not to affect the supply and demand situation," he said.
Holopainen, however, admitted that electricity prices are bound to increase in the next few days.
"The three natural gas-fired power plants have assured that they would continue to run either by bunker oil or may opt to run some oil-based plants (Limay and Malaya) which may be expensive," he said.
But Holopainen said it is really hard to predict how much expensive the power cost will be in the next few days.
Last month, PEMC said it expected a possible power supply interruption from Nov. 18 to Dec. 12, 2006 due to scheduled maintenance of gas pipeline of the Malampaya gas project in Palawan.
The operators of the three gas-run power facilities have assured that they would continue to operate using a number of liquid fuel substitutes and/or by running other power plants.
First Gas Corp., owner of Sta. Rita and San Lorenzo, said it would possibly use condensate to run their gas-fired power facilities during the duration of the scheduled maintenance of the Malampaya platform.