Businessman Gregorio Araneta III is spending P10 billion to build an 800-megawatt pump storage hydropower plant in Pangil, Laguna.
Araneta said Gregorio Araneta Inc. was now conducting a predevelopment feasibility study on the project which would have an initial capacity of 170 MW.
The project will sit on a 270-hectare property. He said the company would acquire more properties within the area.
The predevelopment feasibility study on the project will be done by 2019 while construction will be completed after two years.
The company hopes to secure power supply agreement for the project over the next one and a half years.
Araneta said aside from the hydro power project in Laguna, the company also planned to build a power plant in Mindanao.
The proposed hydro plant will add to the group’s current energy portfolio of clean energy projects which include a 280-MW solar farm in Cadiz City, Negros Occidental which is the biggest in Southeast Asia and seventh largest in the world.
Araneta said unit Energy Oil and Gas Holdings Inc. also submitted an unsolicited proposal to build a $2-billion integrated liquefied natural gas project in Bataan.
He said while the project was rejected by state-run Philippine National Oil Co., he was still hoping that the government would reconsider the project given the country’s need to achieve energy stability.
The group plans to initially build a 600-MW LNG power plant at roughly $1.2 billion and eventually increase the output to 1,200 MW and 2,000 MW.
The plant will sit within PNOC’s 90-hectare land in Bataan.
Araneta earlier said his group teamed up with businessman Manuel Pangilinan and Mitsui and Osaka Gas of Japan as joint partners for this project.
PNOC earlier said the lease offer of EOGHI “remains unacceptable”.
PNOC reportedly wants to EOGHI to increase the rental rate for the project from P63 to P78 per square meter.
Araneta said PNOC could just be using the rental rate issue to delay the process.
PNOC is now exploring at least two options, which were either a build-operate-transfer scheme or a joint venture with private sector partners for the planned $2-billion LNG facility.
