DOE: No power interruptions during Feb. 4-18 Malampaya shutdown

The Department of Energy (DOE) on Friday said the Malampaya natural gas facility will undergo a maintenance shutdown in February next year, but assured that contingency measures would be in place to ensure uninterrupted power supply during the period.

“The Malampaya Deep Water Gas-to-Power Project will have a scheduled maintenance work from February 4 to 18, 2023,” Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla said at a virtual press briefing.

“This is a regular maintenance activity that is closely coordinated not only with the department but all the other relevant stakeholders,” Lotilla said.

The Energy chief said that the maintenance shutdown of the Malampaya project, which supplies about 20% of Luzon’s power requirements, would "ensure that the facilities and equipment operate in a safe, reliable, and efficient manner to avoid incidents that can potentially impact the continuous supply of gas to the customer power plants."

“During this period, the supply of gas will temporarily stop, and will lead the power plants to switch to alternate sources of fuel,” he said.

For her part, Energy Undersecretary Rowena Guevarra said that the DOE is working with all concerned parties on several contingency measures “to ensure the continuous supply of power in February.”

Contingency measures include the following:

Designation of “must run” plants. A “must run” status means that the concerned power plant must supply electricity to the grid under all conditions

Close coordination with Meralco, other distribution utilities and Retail Electricity Suppliers to activate and expand the Interruptible Load Program (ILP) to help soften the impact whenever supply deficiency and power interruptions are imminent in the grid

National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) to accelerate completion of transmission lines in the Luzon grid and implement a day-ahead (6:00 p.m.) announcement of red and yellow alerts

Encourage large users for own-use generation

Pursue an accelerated campaign for energy efficiency and conservation for industrial, commercial, governmental, and residential consumers

Guevarra explained that the maintenance was originally set for October 2022 and was a follow-up scheduled maintenance to execute work planned in 2021, which were impacted by COVID travel restrictions that prevented the deployment of foreign specialists.

The schedule was moved to first quarter of 2023 to avoid the 2022 typhoon season that can potentially cause start-up delays as experienced in 2021, she said.

"That's non movable. I wanted to add that in talking with officials of the previous administration, they are concerned as well with the Malampaya maintenance," Guevarra said.

“We had a conversation with the NGCP, yesterday… There is a generation margin this February so we are not worried… We have enough generation margin for the month of February even if the Malampay is down,” she said.

Asked if the Malampaya maintenance shutdown would impact power rates for consumers, Lotilla said that it was difficult to provide numbers.

"We pray and hope that the international prices of liquid oil fuels will go down further in the next year or during the February and summer months so that it can tide over the country or Luzon grid in particular over these summer months," he said.

Dry months ‘more worrying’

Gueverra added that “for February, we don’t see the possibility of a yellow alert so we are confident on the February maintenance shutdown of Malampaya.”

A yellow alert means insufficient operating power reserve.

“But we are more worried this summer, starting April to July. We have enough generation total for February even with the Malampaya shutdown,” Guevera said.

“We can say now what months we will have thin margins, we can see it’s in April until June,” she said, adding that “we see in those months the possibility of yellow alerts.”

The Malampaya project located some 50 kilometers offshore from Palawan, is one of the country’s most important power assets.

The project harnessed indigenous natural gas to reduce oil imports, contribute to better air quality, and generate significant revenues for the local government amounting to over P1 trillion.

Since 2001, Malampaya continues to power up to 20% of Luzon’s total electricity requirements.—DVM/AOL, GMA Integrated News