The recurrence of gas supply restriction from the Malampaya field has triggered another round of shutdown for the 414-megawatt San Gabriel power plant of First Gen Corporation, according to sources from the company.

The gas being fed to the San Gabriel power plant of the Lopez group is drawn from the Malampaya field, of which gas production recently has increasingly been turning wobbly.

In the past three weeks, this is the second time that the San Gabriel facility had been placed on forced downtime because of fuel lack from the country’s indigenous gas field.

“San Gabriel has to be shut down because of Malampaya gas restriction. It was also shut down from September 18-24 because of lack of Malampaya gas supply,” the source noted.

With San Gabriel’s shutdown, power utility giant Manila Electric Company (Meralco) which is the off-taker of the plant’s generated capacity, will have to suffer from reduced supply availability – and the implication of that could be higher exposure to volatile or higher prices in the spot market.

According to sources from affected players in the power supply chain, “the gas supply restriction at Malampaya is open-ended. There will be gas when there is gas -- there is really no certainty on when it will come and when it will stop.”

It was emphasized that even if Malampaya is no longer supplying gas to the Ilijan plant because that generating asset already converted its fuel utilization to imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), “we’re still experiencing recurring gas supply deficiencies from Malampaya.”

The Santa Rita and San Lorenzo gas plants of First Gen can shift to liquid fuel, but that option will be more expensive. And in the case of the San Gabriel plant, it is only designed to run on gas – either from volumes supplied via the Malampaya field or to LNG when this is already available to the Lopez-owned plants.

Meralco, in particular, opined that “the LNG terminals are already needed just to ensure power generation capacity sufficiency.”

The operatorship of the Malampaya field has been granted to a new entity – Filipino firm Prime Energy -- in November last year. And while its service contract had been extended for another 15 years or until 2039, the drilling of new wells for any targeted additional production is still being firmed up for 2024 or 2025.

Last Sunday (October 1), on a low consumption period and with relatively cooler temperatures, more than 850,000 customers of Meralco had to endure blackouts or service interruptions of about 15 to 30 minutes due to tripping of the 500-kilovolt San Jose-Nagsaag transmission line of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines.

Meralco conveyed that it was “forced to drop almost 470 megawatts of load to help the grid recover,” hence, that triggered service disruptions to its customers.

Apart from the grid’s fragility, repeated gas unavailability from the Malampaya field will add to the distress of the industry and policymakers when it comes to ensuring reliable electricity supply for all Filipino consumers.