San Miguel targets $1.2 B for 2 Visayas power plants

MANILA, Philippines - Food-to-infrastructure conglomerate San Miguel Corp., is eyeing to build at least two coal-fired power plants in the Visayas region, worth about $1.2 billion, its top official said.

“We will be building more plants. We will build one in Cebu and in the island of Panay,” SMC president Ramon Ang said.

He said the plants would have a capacity of at least 300 megawatts (MW) and could be constructed in two to three years.

When asked how much the plants would cost, Ang said as a rule of thumb, a coal-fired power plant cost around $2 million per MW. This means each plant could cost $600 million.

These projects will keep SMC busy in the next few years as it finishes several projects next year.

The company is on track to build a 600-MW coal-fired power plant in Limay, Bataan and a 300-MW plant in Malita, Davao by 2016.

The Malita plant could further be expanded by another 300 MW, which is already in the pipeline, Ang said.

The expansion would be cheaper and faster than putting up a new plant in the area due to existing facilities, he noted.

“If its greenfield, it will take two to three years. But for Malita, we will just add a transmission line and that will just take 18 months,” he said.

In July, Ang said SMC has room to double its power generation capacity, which has an installed capacity of 2,545 MW.

It has one of the biggest generation companies in the country, cornering 17 percent market share of the power supply of the national grid, and 23 percent share of the Luzon grid as of end-2012.