Consunji-led Semirara Mining and Power Corporation (SMPC) is eyeing to take a provocative step as the third company breaking into the regenerated coal plant development gamble, with the targeted revival of its 700-megawatt Saint Raphael power project in Batangas that will likely command an investment of roughly $1.4 billion.

The first company to ignite coal installation’s resurgence has been Aboitiz Power Corporation for its Therma Visayas expansion project in the Visayas grid; while Meralco PowerGen, the power generation investment arm of power utility giant Manila Electric Company (Meralco) is also planning to resurrect its blueprinted 1,200MW Atimonan project in Quezon province.

All of these projects have been excluded from the coal moratorium declared by the Department of Energy (DOE) because they were already at advanced stages of their implementation prior to the policy’s enforcement in 2020 -- and they are out to challenge the lucrative play for renewables, being the next to take the ‘crown’ in the country’s energy mix; and will similarly put to extreme test some banks’ previous pronouncements that they will no longer fund new coal-generated capacities.

According to SMPC President and Chief Operating Officer Maria Cristina C. Gotianun, the main decision point to be considered by the company on its go-signal for the project will be the completion of a transmission facility expansion that will support the wheeling of capacity of new plants in the southern part of the Luzon grid.

She emphasized that if the company will go ahead with the project without the assurance of a grid capacity reinforcement, their generation may not also add to much-needed supply for Luzon, “because we would not be able to transmit that capacity.”

Gotianun qualified that the expansion and upgrade of the transmission network within the Batangas corridor are already included in the Transmission Development Plan (TDP) that the DOE approved, so “we will just need to wait for its implementation and completion.”

She added “there’s really a need for another line, because (the existing transmission facility) is overloaded – and that even causes the tripping of our plants at times.”

SMPC Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Isidro A. Consunji conveyed that they temporarily shelved the Saint Raphael project in 2019 because the power supply agreement (PSA) for the facility had been affected by a Supreme Court ruling mandating the conduct of competitive selection process (CSP) for all capacity procurements of the distribution utilities (DUs) –specifically those that were negotiated from June 30, 2015 and onwards.

Unfortunately, the supply contract for the Saint Raphael project which had been underwritten by Meralco was also covered in the high court verdict.

When that plant was first advanced into commercial development, Japanese firm Marubeni Corporation cornered at least 20% stake and it should have been SMPC’s key partner in the venture.

Nevertheless, because of the snag in the project’s implementation, the Japanese firm also opted out eventually from the tie-up.

Prior to the regulatory and judicial setbacks, the company previously indicated that it was negotiating with American firm Black & Veatch for the project’s engineering, procurement and construction contract. But even that had to be dropped also when the project stalled.

The Consunji group is already a well-entrenched player in the deregulated power sector with coal generating fleets – namely its Sem-Calaca and Southwest Luzon Power Generation Corp. coal-fired plants that are all sited in Batangas province.