3 renewable energy firms team up for Makiling geothermal project

MANILA, Philippines - Three leading renewable energy developers are set to sign a joint venture agreement for a geothermal project in Mt. Makiling in Laguna.

Petrogreen Energy Corp., Trans-Asia Oil and Energy Development Corp., and PNOC-Renewables Corp.  (PNOC-RC) will seal the JVA on May 19.

Petrogreen is a unit of publicly-listed Petroenergy Resources Corp.

TA Oil is the power generation arm of the Philippine Investment and Management Corp. (Phinma) of the Del Rosario family.

PNOC-RC is the renewable energy development arm of the state-owned Philippine National Oil Co. (PNOC).

Petroenergy has said it plans to raise funds through stock rights offering to finance its renewable energy projects.

In a previous disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, the company said it will incorporate a wholly-owned subsidiary to undertake its renewable energy projects, Petrogreen, which will be capitalized at P200 million.

Petroenergy has been aggressively engaging in awarded bidding rounds of the Department of Energy (DOE) particularly in renewable energy developments.

The Maibarara geothermal field in Mt. Makiling was awarded to Petroenergy last February. 

The award came after Petroenergy submitted a winning bid for Maibarara during the latest Philippine Energy Contracting Round (PECR) launched by DOE in October last year.

PERC committed to an integrated steamfield and power plant development that targets the commissioning of the first 20 MW geothermal power plant by 2013. 

For the first two years of the contract, PERC budgeted $18 million for a program aimed at rehabilitating existing wells, drilling new wells and updating the resource capacity of the field.

With the acquisition of the Maibarara geothermal service contract, PERC’s expansion into renewable energy continues following the award last year of two wind energy service contracts in Sual, Pangasinan and Nabas, Aklan.

These renewable energy projects are envisioned to provide long term revenues and growth for the company while its core petroleum project in offshore Gabon, as well as oil projects in the Philippines, will sustain the company in the near- and medium term.