The Department of Energy (DoE) is aligning at least seven power plant projects to serve as anchor load for the proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities which are targeted on stream until 2015.

Documents have specified the projects to include two greenfield power facilities with capacities of 500 and 600 megawatts (likely sited in Bataan); 30-MW Angeles City power plant; 116-MW Subic power plant; 50-MW Mabalacat power plant; and 150-MW Rosario power plant.

There have also been proposals to convert the 600-MW Limay power plant into LNG-fired facility, although it appears that this is not really aligned with the investment plan of facility owner San Miguel Energy Corporation.

San Miguel Corporation president Ramon S. Ang has noted that they would want to keep the Limay plant at its current form and will just set it as stand-by capacity for “emergency purposes” especially when supply runs too tight again in the Luzon grid.

Apart from the power plants, the energy department is also looking at industrial users and economic zone locators as prospective market for the planned LNG facilities.

Based on DoE’s initial assessment, one of the LNG facilities likely to be concretized would be the one proposed by the Philippine National Oil Company (PNOC). The scale of investments eyed would hover at P24.63 billion.

An integrated component of the envisioned expanded gas industry in the Philippines would be the high-pressure gas pipelines that shall deliver supply to targeted markets – mainly the propounded 140-kilometer Batangas-Manila 2 pipeline.

The project blueprint indicated that the BatMan2 pipeline will cater to “possible anchor markets including the Limay combined-cycle power plant converted into a natural gas-fired plant, economic zones particularly Subic route.”

It was further noted that “BatMan 2 would be fed from an LNG receiving terminal located in the Bataan Peninsula.”

The department added that the LNG terminal “will serve as a receiving, storage and re-gasification facilities of imported gas supply.”

Apart from supplying the fuel needs of power plants, the LNG facility’s use is also propounded to be extended for prospective markets in Central Luzon, such as the various economic zones in Bataan, Zambales and Pampanga provinces.

“The LNG terminal would also ensure sustainable gas supply beyond the life of the Malampaya gas field. This receiving terminal could provide for gas supply to Metro Manila via the Bataan-to-Cavite offshore pipeline traversing Manila Bay and could even provide supply to BatMan 1,” the department has emphasized.