The Department of Energy (DOE) said it has not approved yet the application of US firm Excelerate Energy for a permit to construct, expand, rehabilitate and modify (PECRM), which serves as the second-stage requirement for it to advance its proposed offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) import facility in Batangas Bay into construction phase.
According to Atty. Rino Abad, director of the Oil Industry Management Bureau (OIMB), the US company lodged its PCERM application fourth quarter of last year, “but there was one major requirement that it was not able to submit until May this year – that’s the audited financial statement.”
He added that when the company’s audited financial statement was finally submitted to the energy department, the evaluation process stretched until June this year, hence, it was already snagged by the change of leadership in the government.
“The PCERM application of Excelerate Energy is still pending, and we have yet to refer its application to the new Undersecretary in-charge,” the energy official said.
At this stage, he said the review committee needs to be reconstituted after the appointment of a new Assistant Secretary who will be in-charge of the LNG projects.
The initial target on the project’s completion was set for second quarter this year, but Abad said it will be obviously delayed given that the permit-to-construct has not even been granted yet to the project sponsor.
The DOE official emphasized that the blueprint of the proposed "Filipinas LNG facility" of Excelerate Energy is being positioned as "security asset" that will give third party access (TPA) to multiple end-users -- even those which would not be considered as its anchor market.
The company secured its notice-to-proceed (NTP) for the LNG venture in 2019, but given the hurdles of the Covid-19 lockdowns that it had to wade through during the preliminary stages of its development work, the proposed facility already encountered delays vis-à-vis its implementation timeline.
Excelerate Energy claimed that it has import capacity of roughly 5.0 million tons of LNG per annum, enough to provide power capacity of up to 4,000 megawatts.
Apart from the drawbacks of the coronavirus pandemic, however, the LNG facilities being built in the country are now being impeded by surging gas prices in the world market, which was triggered by the long-drawn-out war between Russia and Ukraine.