Four power firms to go public

At least four upstart power firms are expected to go public to take advantage of the bullish sentiments of both domestic and foreign investors and raise capital for their respective expansion programs, a former energy official said.

In a power forum sponsored by financial services company Citiseconline Tuesday, Merritt Partners Pte. Ltd. chairman and former Energy Secretary Vince Perez said among the companies that may soon tap the equities market are Northwind Power Development Co., San Carlos Bioenergy, PNOC-Alternative Fuels Corp., and Enerfuse Holdings Inc.

Perez formed Merritt Partners, an energy advisory firm catering to companies with existing or potential energy business in Asia. Its energy expertise and experience span the upstream and downstream oil and gas; power generation, transmission and distribution; and renewable energy.

Enerfuse Holdings Inc., a joint venture among four independent oil firms, plans to list on the Philippine Stock Exchange within three years to raise capital for future projects.

Eastern Petroleum, Seaoil Philippines, Flying V and Unioil are the shareholders of Enerfuse, which owns 50 percent of a larger company, BioEnergy8 Corp. BioEnergy8, which also includes coconut oil producers Golden Asian Oil and Mt. Holly Coco Industrial, earlier announced plans to infuse roughly P50 million to operate a biodiesel plant in Davao. The plant, with an operating capacity of 30 million liters yearly, is projected to supply half of the country’s annual biodiesel requirements.

Northwind, meanwhile, has a 25-megawatt wind farm in Bangui, Ilocos Norte, which is supported by a loan from the Danish International Development Agency and guaranteed by the Philippine Export-Import Credit Agency (PhilExim).

San Carlos, on the other hand, is setting up an ethanol distillery with an integrated co-generation power plant, which is targeted to produce 125,000 liters per day (35 to 39 million liters a year) of fuel grade ethanol, while the power plant will have a capacity of eight megawatts.

PNOC-Alternative Fuels, another potential IPO candidate, is a unit of state-owned Philippine National Oil Co. which will spearhead the development of alternative fuels in the country, particularly jatropha-based biodiesel.

The government has allotted P1 billion for jatropha-based biodiesel research and development.

More energy and power generation companies have expressed interest to list on the exchange given the overwhelming investor response to the listing of PNOC-Energy Development Corp.

PNOC-EDC listed on Dec. 14, 2006 almost 40 percent of its shares on the bourse, raising about P16.7 billion.