The 150-megawatt Casecnan multi-purpose hydropower facility has, for the meantime, been excluded by the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation (PSALM) from the bidding line-up for independent power producer administrator (IPPA) appointment.

“The contract is complicated, so we are not including it for (IPPA) bidding,” PSALM president Jose C. Ibazeta said.

When the asset-seller company dropped hints that it will bid out Casecnan for IPPA, it was Lopez-owned First Gen Hydro that first expressed interest in the asset’s contract, given strategic proximity to its Pantabangan-Masiway plants acquisition.

For now though, interested parties would have to put their ‘enthusiasm’ on hold as far as that hydro plant’s contract privatization is concerned.

Ibazeta noted the contractual commitment of the Casecnan project also covers irrigation component, so that it will set some complications on dispatch arrangements when there will be an IPPA for the power capacity.

For the non-power component of the asset, project sponsor CalEnergy International Ltd, an affiliate of MidAmerican Energy, has a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) contract with the National Irrigation Administration, which in turn sealed off-take agreement with the National Power Corporation (NPC) for the electricity generated from the plant.

Instead of Casecnan, Ibazeta indicated that what they are planning to schedule next at the auction block, by around April to May, would be the privatization of the Bacon-Manito geothermal plant and the IPPA engagement for the contract of the Unified Leyte geothermal facility. The Casecnan project’s development started in 1994, but its completion spanned seven years, having reached commercial operation only in December 2001.

CalEnergy noted that the project’s long lead time was due to technical challenges in the modified design, especially with the integration of a component that can maximize benefits of the underutilized Pantabangan dam.

The 26-kilometer tunnel is the passageway for approximately 800 million cubic meters of water drawn from the Casecnan and Taan rivers in Nueva Vizcaya, that are then discharged into the Pantabangan dam in Nueva Ecija for utilization into the irrigation of farmlands in Central Luzon.

The project’s irrigation capacity could cover both the estimated 35,000 hectares of new rice lands and the existing 102,000 hectares, primarily in Nueva Ecija, the so-called “rice granary of the Philippines”; as well as those in neighboring provinces of Tarlac and Bulacan.