Napocor to bid out P363-M worth of coal contracts

The National Power Corp. (Napocor) will bid out P363-million worth of coal contracts next month for its Naga, Cebu Thermal Power Plant.

Based on a report from the Department of Energy (DOE), the supply and delivery of 120,000 metric tons (MT) of coal will be used for the April to December 2006 supply requirement of the Cebu-based coal power facility.

The bidding, which will be conducted through open competitive bidding procedures, will be done on Feb. 28.

The pre-bid conference shall be held on Feb. 15 at the Napocor compound in Quezon City.

In 2004, coal accounted for the bulk of the generation mix of Napocor with 16,194 GWh or 28.9 percent of the total.

But the share of coal in the company’s generation mix has gone down to 15,307 MW or 26 percent in 2005.

It is expected that in 2006, the share of coal in the gross generation of state-run power firm will further decrease to 25.3 percent.

DOE data showed that the share of coal in the country’s energy utilization has jumped to 28.7 percent in 2004 from only 10 percent in 2000.

DOE records also show that local coal utilization particularly in the power and cement industries has experienced steady growth in the past few years to 20 percent in 2002 and inching up further to 23 percent in 2003.

Last year, local coal production hit a record high of 2.7 million metric tons (MMT) from 2.03 MMT a year ago. In 2002, some 1.66 MMT of local coal was produced. The country has an estimated mineable coal reserve of 330 MMMT.

Napocor is exploring the possibility of increasing the volume of local coal that is being used to run its coal-fired power plants.

The state-run power firm is currently blending 10 percent of local coal every month to generate power from its coal-fired facilities.

If possible, the power company would be looking at a 30 percent/70 percent blend and eventually a 50/50 percent blend of local and imported coal.

Napocor started the pre-blending of local coal in Pagbilao power plant, one of Napocor’s independent power producers (IPPs).

Pagbilao power station consists of two 367.5 megawatt (MW) coal-fueled generating units or a total of 735-MW generating capacity. It is utilizing about 30,000 tons of coal per month.

It was developed on a 29-year build-operate-transfer (BOT) contract basis between the Napocor and Mirant Philippines Inc., a subsidiary of US-based Mirant Corp.