Aseagas goes on shutting down Batangas biomass plant

MANILA — Aboitiz Power Corporation (APC) said Monday its wholly owned subsidiary Aseagas Corporation is pushing through with the shutdown of its 8.8-megawatt biomass power plant in Lian, Batangas to further assess the plant’s technical problems and determine the best thing to do with the facility.

The Lian plant was forced to cease operations due to the unavailability of the supply of organic effluent wastewater from Absolut Distillers, Inc.

Aseagas also disclosed Monday that it pre-paid its outstanding loan with the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) amounting to PHP2.368 billion. Aseagas also has invested equity of around PHP950 million for the biomass plant and has around PHP460 million in outstanding liabilities.

“This continued shutdown will allow us to look at our options, taking into consideration the interests of all our stakeholders,” AboitizPower President and COO Antonio R. Moraza said. “Despite these challenges, our other projects are progressing as planned. About 500 MW of attributable capacity, mainly from baseload and hydropower plants, will come online in 2018. We are on track to meeting our 4,000-MW net attributable capacity target by 2020.”