BIZ BUZZ: Meralco hits back at DOE exec
Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), armed with a fresh 25-year franchise extension, called out an energy official for claiming its delayed power supply deal has allegedly led to higher rates at the spot market.
In a lengthy statement, the power distributor backed by billionaire Manuel V. Pangilinan dismissed the points raised by Department of Energy (DOE) assistant secretary Mario Marasigan in a recent briefing as “utterly untrue.”
“It is lamentable that a high-ranking DOE official speaks out of turn and makes statements that are false and misleading,” the company said.
The energy giant said the “obvious and main cause” for spiking prices at the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) was the insufficient supply to the grid, stressing that the scarcity won’t be fixed even if the commissioning of Excellent Energy Resources Inc. (Eeri) were implemented on time.
Although the grid has welcomed new capacities from solar projects, Meralco said Luzon “has not had any large new or greenfield baseload plant since 2002,” with many of the existing facilities now suffering from aging and forced outages.
It once again slammed Marasigan for being tone-deaf to “the magnitude of the problem caused by the lack of new power plants…”
Meralco said that instead of pinning the blame on its delayed supply pact with Eeri, the government should focus on enticing more investments in new power plants.
Eeri is supposed to start delivering energy to Meralco in December 2024, but due to fuel supply issues and the completion of its final unit, full commercial operations were pushed back to May.
Delays in regulatory approvals of needed power deals also “significantly contribute to supply deficiency and an increase in generation cost,” it added.
The group maintained that its competitive bidding process was in accordance to government rules.
Marasigan, meanwhile, did not respond to Bizz Buzz when asked for a reaction.
