Batangas Clean Energy Inc., a company controlled by taipan Lucio Tan, applied for a notice to proceed with a liquefied natural gas project in Batangas province.
Energy Undersecretary Donato Marcos said the company’s application for the floating storage regassification unit in Batangas was under process.
“It’s a consortium. Their captive market [includes] JG Summit, Tanduay, Eton, Asia Brewery,” Marcos said.
“Their business model, or captive market, to assure viability [includes] Tanduay, Asia Brewery, Eton, JG Summit and others,” he said.
Gerry Tee, head of the Lucio Tan Group of Companies, said in June that the planned LNG facility might be built at the group’s 38-hectare Batangas property.
“[It is a] project of Lucio ‘Bong’ Tan Jr. and his dad to utilize the Pinamucan property in Batangas as a possible site for LNG project. We’ve been looking at our assets, and we saw this,” Tee said.
He said the power unit of the group was planning to team up with a foreign company for the LNG facility.
Tee said the Pinamucan property houses Himmel Industries Inc., a chemical trading company while a part of the property houses fuel jet tanks of Philippine Airlines. The property also has unutilized space.
He said Himmel Industries might be relocated to another site if the planned push through.
Tee said they were also looking at putting up power plants with a combined capacity of about 1,000 megawatts.
“[Based on] initial data, we need around $1.5 billion for the power plant, regas and distribution. We are in the Initial stages of getting permits and to reconfigure the land to put up the equipment,” he said.
Tee said there was still room for growth in the emerging LNG space.
“We can compete. It’s a big pie. Our advantage is we own the land and it is near the substation and transmission lines. We know that Malampaya is depleting soon, so we want to take this opportunity to expand and utilize the land. It would be renewable and clean energy, but not in the magnitude of Aboitiz and Lopez, but we are going there. We are just looking for better partners,” he said.