Cebu based Vivant to bid for power barges

MANILA, Philippines - Cebu-based Vivant Corp. said it will bid for the government’s four power barges that are now up for grabs.

The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM), the agency tasked to sell the state’s power assets, announced last month the sale of the four power barges.

PSALM said the deadline for the submission of bids is on Oct. 9, to be followed immediately by the opening and evaluation of bids.

After submission of the initial requirements set by PSALM, Vivant will proceed with due diligence to assess the technical and financial viability of the assets, the publicly-listed company said.

Power Barges 101, 102, 103 and 104 are nominal 32-megawatt (MW) barge-mounted bunker-fired diesel generating power stations that consist of four identical Hitachi-Sulzer diesel generator units rated at eight MW each.

After earlier attempts to sell the barges failed, PSALM revised the bidding terms for this year’s sale.

Under the new plan, PSALM will sell PB 101, 102 and 103 – all based in Iloilo province in the Visayas region – as one package.

The barges will no longer be required to be transferred to Mindanao.

On the other hand, PSALM will sell PB 104 as a separate package.

The buyer will be required to operate the barge in Mindanao for at least five years, according to PSALM’s new bid terms.

Under its previous bidding parameters, PSALM required the buyers of the three barges to transfer and operate these in Mindanao.

PSALM tried to bid out the power barges in the past but it declared two rounds of bidding as a failure after only one bidder participated in both exercises.

In the first bidding held in May 2012, only ACTA Power – a joint venture between Ayala Corp.’s AC Energy Holdings and Phinma’s Trans-Asia Oil and Energy Development Corp. – submitted an offer, PSALM said.

Similarly, in the second auction held in August last year, only Trans-Asia submitted a bid. Subsequent negotiations with Trans-Asia also failed.

Commissioned in 1981, PB 101 and 102 are currently moored at Barangay Obrero in Iloilo City, while PBs 103 and 104, which were commissioned in 1985, are moored at Estancia, Iloilo and at the Holcim compound in Ilang, Davao City, respectively, PSALM said.

Vivant is involved both in the distribution business as well as in the power generation business, with substantial equity in Visayan Electric Co. Inc., the second largest power utility company in the Philippines. 

It also has a stake in Cebu Private Power Corp. which owns and operates one of the largest diesel power plants in Cebu.