Malampaya sets 2-day shutdowns in July, Sept

MANILA, Philippines - The Malampaya natural gas field in Palawan will undergo a series of two-day maintenance shutdowns in July and September but will not cause any power supply interruption in the Luzon grid, the Department of Energy (DOE) said Wednesday.

In a briefing, DOE Undersecretary Felix William Fuentebella said there is a scheduled maintenance work on the Malampaya project on July 15-16.

This is in preparation for the pipeline inspection gauge activities, or pigging, of the 504-kilometer subsea pipeline which connects the offshore platform to onshore power plants in Batangas.

The two-day shutdown will affect the operations of two 250-megawatt (MW) units of the Sta. Rita gas-fired power plant during those days. However, one unit of the Sta. Rita plant was also scheduled to go on shutdown at the same time.

Meanwhile, the 21-day pigging activities planned in August will not result to any shutdown or gas restriction from the Malampaya project, the DOE official said.

The pigging procedure allows for the inspection of the current state of its pipelines and intends to eliminate accumulated deposits which affect the overall productivity of the facility.

The Malampaya gas project is again expected to undergo maintenance shutdown on Sept. 23-24 which covers the preventive and corrective maintenance works, Fuentebella said.

The preventive maintenance works involves testing of shutdown valves and emergency depressurization system tests while the corrective maintenance activities will cover the heat exchanger repair.

Plants that will be affected are one unit of the Sta. Rita plant (250 MW), one unit of Ilijan (600 MW) and one unit of San Lorenzo plant (250 MW), which was scheduled to shut down on those days.

Fuentebella said the maintenance schedule was timed to coincide with the planned shutdown of the plants and during weekends when power demand is anticipated to be low.